Coagh ambush

Background

In May 1987, an eight-man unit of the Provisional IRA East Tyrone Brigade was ambushed and shot dead by a Special Air Service (SAS) unit seconds after bombing the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base at Loughgall, County Armagh. The SAS also killed a civilian who had accidentally driven into the ambush. This was the IRA's greatest loss of life in a single incident during its campaign. Despite this major setback, IRA activity in East Tyrone didn't lessen in the following years.

In August 1988, the SAS shot dead another three IRA members who were stalking a UDR soldier near Carrickmore. British intelligence sources claimed the men were involved in the Ballygawley bus bombing, which killed eight British soldiers and injured 28. The British military had to ferry its troops in and out of East Tyrone by helicopter as result of the Ballygawley bombing.

Tit-for-tat killings in East Tyrone

According to Scottish author Kevin Toolis, the series of killings which led to the Coagh ambush began on 26 April 1988, when a 23-year-old UDR soldier from Coagh, Edward Gibson, was shot dead by an IRA unit at Ardboe. Gibson was working for Cookstown Council on a bin lorry at the time. Off-duty UDR soldiers, who tended to be Protestants, were common targets of the IRA in County Tyrone. These kind of assassinations fostered a perception among some Protestants that the IRA was waging a sectarian war against them. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) retaliated by killing Phelim McNally (brother of local Sinn Féin councillor Francie McNally) on 24 November 1988. The IRA revenge took the form of a shooting at Leslie Dallas's garage on 7 March 1989. Dallas, a former UDR soldier, whom the IRA claimed was a UVF volunteer, was killed along with two elderly civilian pensioners.

The tit-for-tat rampage in and around Coagh continued on 29 November 1989, when UVF gunmen burst into a pub owned by IRA member Liam Ryan; Ryan and a customer were shot dead. On 8 March 1990, UDR soldier and construction worker Thomas Jamison was killed when the IRA, using guns and a grenade, ambushed the truck he was driving near Donaghmore. Jamison was returning from delivering concrete to a UDR base. He was an employee of Henry Brothers, a construction company that had rebuilt and refurnished a number of security bases across Northern Ireland since 1985. Harold Henry, one of the two brothers who owned the company, had been killed by the IRA in 1987 in The Loup, County Londonderry.

The UVF renewed the bloodshed on 3 March 1991, when four men were shot dead in the strongly republican village of Cappagh. Three of the four were IRA members. Republican sources claim the attack could have been carried out only with help from the security forces. The IRA retaliated on 9 April 1991, when alleged UVF member Derek Ferguson (a cousin of local Member of Parliament Reverend William McCrea) was shot dead in Coagh by the East Tyrone Brigade. His family denied any paramilitary links.

Toolis includes as part of this cycle of violence the destruction of Glenanne UDR barracks in nearby County Armagh, in which three soldiers were killed and 10 injured by an IRA truck bomb on 30 May. The IRA later claimed the killings in Coagh were retaliation by the SAS for the Glenanne bombing.

The ambush

At about 7.30 am on 3 June 1991, three Tyrone IRA volunteers – Tony Doris, Michael "Pete" Ryan and Lawrence McNally – drove from Moneymore, County Londonderry to the village of Coagh in a hijacked Vauxhall Cavalier, crossing the bridge between counties Londonderry and Tyrone. The IRA acknowledged that the trio was en route to kill a part-time UDR soldier, who was also a contractor to the security forces. The plan, however, was betrayed either by an informer inside the IRA, or by technical surveillance. The SAS unit was waiting for the car on both sides of Coagh's main street and in a disguised lorry. According to witnesses, they were wearing boiler suits and gas masks. The car was driven by Doris toward the center of the village. The IRA unit's journey from Moneymore had been tracked on the ground and even from the air. The undercover team set up a "decoy" for the IRA, played by an SAS soldier who behaved like the intended victim, sitting in a car while waiting for a friend on his way to work.

When the car reached a pre-established spot, eight SAS members opened-fire from close range, riddling the Vauxhall with over 200 rounds of high-velocity automatic fire. Tony Doris was immediately hit, and the out-of-control Vauxhall crashed into two parked cars. The shooting continued for about ten minutes, until the car exploded in flames and set one of the parked vehicles (a Volkswagen Golf) alight. According to an eyewitness, one of the PIRA volunteers returned fire on the SAS after the car crashed. Some reports claim at least two of the men fled the blazing car and were found lying half out of the vehicle. Some relatives believe the two men had escaped but were then shot and dragged back into the car by SAS members. A crime-scene report stated that a balaclava of one of the men was found some distance away. The bodies were so badly burnt that they had to be identified using dental records. Two rifles were recovered from the charred car. Forensics later found that the weapons had been used in the killings at Leslie Dallas's garage in 1989.

Reactions

Local Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politician William McCrea – cousin of Derek Ferguson, killed by the IRA on 9 April – declared that "They have fallen into the pit they planned for others.... Justice has now been done". Ian Paisley, leader of the DUP, welcomed the ambush and said "The time has come for a full war". Sinn Féin councillor Francie McNally – brother of Lawrence McNally – said the three men were "good soldiers ... executed by the British Crown forces". Republican sources criticised both the RUC and Gardaí for "delaying and harassing" the funerals of the three men, who were buried with full Irish republican honours. Republican sources assailed initial RUC claims that the IRA unit was in the process of shooting Protestant workmen. Social Democratic and Labour Party MP Seamus Mallon warned that an "ethic of violence is eating into the soul of this community" and that he "hoped that every effort at arrest had been made".

Later East Tyrone Brigade operations

IRA recruiting in Tyrone continued unabated despite the ambush. Just two months later it shot dead a former UDR soldier driving a truck on Altmore road, near Cappagh. In January 1992 an IRA landmine at Teebane killed eight construction workmen (one of them a Royal Irish Rangers soldier) who were working on a British Army base. Another SAS ambush killed four IRA volunteers in Coalisland in February 1992, but a month later a bomb attack maimed a soldier at Cappagh and prompted a series of clashes between nationalist residents and British troops in heavily republican Coalisland.

By 1993 there were reports of an apparent IRA campaign of assassinations to drive Protestants land-owners out of Tyrone and Fermanagh, especially after a bomb attached to his car killed former UDR soldier and land-owner David Martin in Kildress.