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Attack On Derryard Checkpoint
On 13 December 1989 the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacked a British Army permanent vehicle checkpoint complex manned by the King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) near the Northern Ireland–Republic of Ireland border at Derryard townland, a few miles north of Rosslea, County Fermanagh. The IRA unit, firing from the back of an armoured dump truck, attacked the small base with heavy machine-guns, grenades, anti-tank rockets and a flamethrower. A nearby Army patrol arrived at the scene and a fierce firefight erupted. The IRA withdrew after leaving a van bomb inside the complex, but the device did not fully detonate. The assault on the outpost left two soldiers dead and two wounded. Planning According to journalist Ed Moloney, the IRA Army Council, suspecting a great deal of infiltration by double agents at the grassroots level of the IRA, decided to form an experimental flying column (instead of the usual active service unit) to mount a large-scale operation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " irregular war" or " low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England and mainland Europe. The conflict was primarily political and nationalistic, fuelled by historical events. It also had an ethnic or sectarian dimension but despite use of the terms 'Protestant' and 'Catholic' to refer to the two sides, it was not a religious conflict. A key issue was the status of Northern Ireland. Unionists and loyalists, who for historical reasons were mostly Ulster Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
King's Own Scottish Borderers
The King's Own Scottish Borderers (KOSBs) was a line infantry regiment of the British Army, part of the Scottish Division. On 28 March 2006 the regiment was amalgamated with the Royal Scots, the Royal Highland Fusiliers (Princess Margaret's Own Glasgow and Ayrshire Regiment), the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), the Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons), the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Princess Louise's), 52nd Lowland Regiment, and 51st Highland Regiment to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland, becoming the 2nd Battalion of the new regiment. However, after just a few months the battalion merged with the Royal Scots (1st Battalion) to form the Royal Scots Borderers. In 2021, the battalion was disbanded and its personnel transferred to the 1st Battalion, Ranger Regiment. History Early history The regiment was raised on 18 March 1689 by David Leslie, 3rd Earl of Leven to defend Edinburgh against the Jacobite forces of James VII. It's claimed that 80 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade
The South Armagh Brigade of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) operated during the Troubles in south County Armagh. It was organised into two battalions, one around Jonesborough and another around Crossmaglen. By the 1990s, the South Armagh Brigade was thought to consist of about 40 members, roughly half of them living south of the border. It has allegedly been commanded since the 1970s by Thomas 'Slab' Murphy who is also alleged to be a member of the IRA's Army Council. Compared to other brigades, the South Armagh IRA was seen as an 'independent republic' within the republican movement, retaining a battalion organizational structure and not adopting the cell structure the rest of the IRA was forced to adopt after repeated intelligence failures. As well as paramilitary activity, the South Armagh Brigade has also been widely accused of smuggling across the Irish border. Between 1970 and 1997 the brigade was responsible for the deaths of 165 members of British security ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loughgall Ambush
The Loughgall ambush took place on 8 May 1987 in the village of Loughgall, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. An eight-man unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched an attack on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base in the village. An IRA member drove a digger with a bomb in its bucket through the perimeter fence, while the rest of the unit arrived in a van and fired on the building. The bomb exploded and destroyed almost half of the base. Soldiers from the British Army's Special Air Service (SAS) then returned fire both from within the base and from hidden positions around it in a pre-planned ambush, killing all of the attackers. Two of them were subsequently found to have been unarmed when they were killed. A civilian was also killed and another wounded by the SAS after unwittingly driving into the ambush zone and being mistaken for IRA attackers. The joint British Army/RUC operation was codenamed Operation Judy.Brown, Andrew. ''The Difficult War: Perspecti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Active Service Unit
An active service unit (ASU; ) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) cell of four to ten members, tasked with carrying out armed attacks. In 2002, the IRA had about 1,000 active members of which about 300 were in active service units. The name “Active Service Unit” dates from the War of Independence as the official army name of the “Flying Columns” to distinguish between Volunteers who acted as support troops versus those “on the run” and actively involved in military attacks. In 1977, the IRA moved away from the larger conventional military organisational principle owing to its perceived security vulnerability. In place of the battalion structures, a system of two parallel types of unit within an IRA Brigade was introduced. Firstly, the old "company" structures were used to supply auxiliary members for support activities such as intelligence-gathering, acting as lookouts or moving weapons. The bulk of attacks from 1977 onwards were the responsibility of a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flying Column
A flying column is a small, independent, military land unit capable of rapid mobility and usually composed of all arms. It is often an ''ad hoc'' unit, formed during the course of operations. The term is usually, though not necessarily, applied to forces less than the strength of a brigade. As mobility is its primary purpose, a flying column is accompanied by the minimum of equipment. It generally uses suitable fast transport; historically, horses were used, with trucks and helicopters replacing them in modern times. History Flying columns are mentioned by Sun Tzu in his '' Art of War'' in such a fashion that indicates it was not a new concept at the time of his writing. This dates to at least the middle 6th century BC, and possibly the late 8th century BC. The Roman army made good use of the flying columns in the early imperial era. One such commander, the proconsul Germanicus Caesar used flying columns to great effect in the early stages of the campaign against one of Rome ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or economic movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from the local level to effect change at the local, regional, national or international level. Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures. Grassroots movements, using self-organization, encourage community members to contribute by taking responsibility and action for their community. Grassroots movements utilize a variety of strategies from fundraising and registering voters, to simply encouraging political conversation. Goals of specific movements vary and change, but the movements are consistent in their focus on increasing mass participation in politics. These political movements may begin as small and at the local level, but grassroots ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Agents
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organization for the target organization. Double agentry may be practised by spies of the target organization who infiltrate the controlling organization or may result from the ''turning'' (switching sides) of previously loyal agents of the controlling organization by the target. The threat of execution is the most common method of turning a captured agent (working for an intelligence service) into a double agent (working for a foreign intelligence service) or a double agent into a ''re-doubled agent''. It is unlike a defector, who is not considered an agent as agents are in place to function for an intelligence service and defectors are not, but some consider that defectors in place are agents until they have defected. Double agents are oft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
IRA Army Council
The IRA Army Council was the decision-making body of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a paramilitary group dedicated to bringing about independence to the whole island of Ireland and the end of the Union between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The Council had seven members, said by the British and Irish governments to have included Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin. The Independent Monitoring Commission declared in 2008 that the council was "no longer operational or functional," but that it had not dissolved. Background Origins The Army Council of the IRA split in December 1969 and a "Provisional" Army Council emerged as the head of the newly formed Provisional Irish Republican Army. Legal status The IRA was a proscribed organization under the terms of the Offences Against the State Acts passed between 1939 and 1998 in the Republic of Ireland and under equivalent anti-terrorist legislation in the United Kingdom, making membership of it a criminal of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ed Moloney
Edmund "Ed" Moloney (born 1948–9) is an Irish journalist and author best known for his coverage of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the activities of the Provisional IRA, in particular. He worked for the ''Hibernia'' magazine and ''Magill'' before going on to serve as Northern Ireland editor for ''The Irish Times'' and subsequently for the ''Sunday Tribune''. He is currently living and working in New York City. His first book, ''Paisley'', was a biography of Unionist leader Ian Paisley, co-authored by Andy Pollak, and published in 1986. In 2002, he published a best selling history of the Provisional IRA, '' A Secret History of the IRA''. A second edition of the book was published in July 2007. This was followed, in 2008, by a new edition of ''Paisley: From Demagogue to Democrat?'', of which Moloney is the single author. In 1999, he was voted Irish Journalist of the Year. In March 2010, the book ''Voices from the Grave'' was published, which featured interviews with Brend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Car Bomb
A car bomb, bus bomb, lorry bomb, or truck bomb, also known as a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED), is an improvised explosive device designed to be detonated in an automobile or other vehicles. Car bombs can be roughly divided into two main categories: those used primarily to kill the occupants of the vehicle (often as an assassination) and those used as a means to kill, injure or damage people and buildings outside the vehicle. The latter type may be parked (the vehicle disguising the bomb and allowing the bomber to get away), or the vehicle might be used to deliver the bomb (often as part of a suicide bombing). It is commonly used as a weapon of terrorism or guerrilla warfare to kill people near the blast site or to damage buildings or other property. Car bombs act as their own delivery mechanisms and can carry a relatively large amount of explosives without attracting suspicion. In larger vehicles and trucks, weights of around 7,000 pounds (3,200 kg) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flamethrower
A flamethrower is a ranged incendiary device designed to project a controllable jet of fire. First deployed by the Byzantine Empire in the 7th century AD, flamethrowers saw use in modern times during World War I, and more widely in World War II as a tactical siege weapon against fortifications. Most military flamethrowers use liquid fuel, typically either gasoline or diesel, but commercial flamethrowers are generally blowtorches using gaseous fuels such as propane; gases are safer in peacetime applications, because their flames have less mass flow rate and dissipate faster, and often are easier to extinguish when necessary. The military use of flamethrowers is restricted through the Protocol on Incendiary Weapons. Apart from the military applications, flamethrowers have peacetime applications where there is a need for controlled burning, such as in sugarcane harvesting and other land-management tasks. Various forms are designed for an operator to carry, while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
