BASE: IRA Attack : Police Base Hit by IRA Mortar Shells; 9 Killed : Northern Ireland Attack Leaves Dozens Wounded

Irish Republican Army guerrillas lobbed mortar shells into a heavily fortified police base in this border town Thursday, hitting the canteen at tea break and killing at least nine officers. Dozens of people were reported wounded.

“The people inside didn’t have a chance,” a senior officer said.

A police spokesman said that at least one more officer was missing and that he fears the body will be found beneath the rubble, through which comrades dug in the darkness, not bringing in lights for fear of snipers.

Officials said most of the bodies dragged from the debris were badly mutilated, hampering identification. “In some cases we can’t make out who they are,” one told reporters. “It’s very gruesome. The carnage is awful, total devastation.”

In a second attack a few hours later, a bomb blew up outside a Roman Catholic church as a foot patrol passed, killing a soldier and seriously wounding two others in Pomeroy, 35 miles northwest of Newry, according to a police spokesman. Police blamed IRA guerrillas, although no one had claimed responsibility for the bombing.

Shells Land in Canteen

Six mortar shells exploded inside the Newry base, said the police spokesman, who would not give his name for security reasons. He said three of the shells scored direct hits on the base canteen, which was packed with personnel on their evening tea break.

Another round hit the observation tower, also damaging houses that ring the base in Newry, which lies on the frontier with the Irish Republic.

The predominantly Catholic IRA, which is trying to drive the British out of mainly Protestant Northern Ireland and unite it with the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic, claimed in a statement telephoned to Belfast news organizations that its men carried out the attack. “This was a major and well-planned operation, indicating our ability to strike where and when we decide,” the outlawed organization said.

Police sources said the mortars were apparently fired by remote control from about 250 yards away. They said the mortar tubes were emplaced on the back of a hijacked truck parked on a hill overlooking the back of the post, which is fenced off with chicken wire.

Kevin Short, a spokesman at Newry’s Daisy Hill Hospital, said that about 30 police officers and civilians were injured in the attack and that 28 were discharged after treatment. Two officers with severe head wounds were taken by helicopter to a Belfast hospital, he said.

Police sources said two of the dead were women officers.

Authorities said several houses around the base were damaged by flying debris and that six police cars were destroyed.

The IRA has attacked security forces’ border bases with mortars frequently in recent years but their weapons, fashioned in clandestine workshops, have been generally inaccurate and have often caused civilian casualties.

Those used Thursday were different, however. Their accuracy has alarmed security chiefs, who fear the IRA may have developed a new weapon in its war for the province.

A civilian who lives near the Newry base told reporters that the shells fired Thursday “came down with deadly accuracy” inside the base.

Thursday’s deaths raised the known death toll from more than 15 years of bloodshed to at least 2,428. Of those, 209 were police officers.

Heavily armed troops and police sealed off Newry, but the attackers were believed to have slipped back across the border into the republic before the mortars were fired.

The death toll was believed to be the worst single casualty count suffered by the predominantly Protestant Royal Ulster Constabulary since Northern Ireland’s sectarian and political fighting erupted in August, 1969.

Newry is only five miles from the border village of Warrenpoint, where the IRA killed 18 British soldiers in a bomb ambush Aug. 27, 1979.

The same day, the IRA killed Earl Mountbatten, Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin, and three other people in the Irish Republic.

Thursday’s attack was the latest instance in an upsurge of violence in the province. Eight people were killed in the previous 10 days.