| Shankill Road bombing | |
|---|---|
| Part of the Troubles | |
 Aftermath of the bombing | |
| Location | 271 Shankill Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland |
| Coordinates | 54°36′14″N 5°57′07″W / 54.604°N 5.952°W |
| Date | 23 October 1993 13:00 (GMT) |
| Target | UDA leadership |
Attack type | Time bomb |
| Deaths | 10 (including bomber) |
| Injured | 57 |
| Perpetrator | Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade |
No. of participants | 2 |
The Shankill Road bombing was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 23 October 1993 and is one of the most well-known incidents of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The IRA aimed to assassinate the leadership of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA), supposedly attending a meeting above Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road, Belfast.[1][2] Two IRA members disguised as deliverymen entered the shop carrying a bomb, which detonated prematurely. Ten people were killed: one of the IRA bombers, a UDA member and eight Protestant civilians, two of whom were children.[3][4] More than fifty people were wounded. The targeted office was empty at the time of the bombing, but the IRA had allegedly realised that the tightly packed area below would inevitably cause "collateral damage" of civilian casualties and continued regardless. However, the IRA have denied this saying that they intended to evacuate the civilians before the explosion.[5][6] It is alleged, and unearthed MI5 documents appear to prove, that British intelligence failed to act on a tip off about the bombing.[7]
The loyalist Shankill Road had been the location of other bomb and gun attacks, including the Balmoral Furniture Company bombing in 1971 and the Mountainview Tavern attack and Bayardo Bar attack both in 1975, but the 1993 bombing had the most casualties. It resulted in a wave of revenge attacks by loyalists, who killed 14 civilians in the week that followed, almost all of them Catholics. The deadliest attack was the Greysteel massacre.
- ^ Henry McDonald & Jim Cusack. UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror. Penguin Ireland, 2004. pp. 247–249
- ^ Dillon, Martin. The Trigger Men: Assassins and Terror Bosses in the Ireland Conflict. Random House, 2011. Part 2: Taking Down 'Mad Dog'.
- ^ "Malcolm Sutton's Index of Deaths from the Conflict in Ireland: 23 October 1993". Conflict Archive on the Internet. Archived from the original on 20 February 2015.
- ^ O'Leary, Brendan (2019). A Treatise on Northern Ireland, Volume I: Colonialism. Oxford University Press. p. 42. ISBN 978-0199243341.
- ^ "Bombing IRA source". BBC News. 23 October 2018. Archived from the original on 9 November 2020. Retrieved 9 May 2020.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
kelly-guardianwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ McSmith, Andy (25 January 2016). "Shankill Road bombing: The history of collusion between MI5 and the IRA". The Independent. Archived from the original on 17 July 2019. Retrieved 31 July 2020.