IRA Attack on Police Station Foiled; 9 Die

Security forces Friday ambushed Irish Republican Army guerrillas who attacked a village police station with explosives. Eight IRA men and a civilian were killed in the clash 30 miles southwest of Belfast, police said.

Security sources said the IRA men put explosives packed in beer kegs into the shovel of an earthmover, then rammed a wall of a village police station as up to four gunmen “riding shotgun” on the earthmover raked the area with gunfire.

The sources said the six officers based in the village of Loughgall were tipped off and elite units, apparently including Special Air Service commandos, moved in to replace them at least 48 hours before in an “elaborate operation.”

They opened fire on the attackers, killing the eight IRA men. A passing civilian driver was killed and his passenger critically wounded in the 10-minute battle, police said. Authorities said two policemen and a British soldier were slightly hurt.

A witness said that as soon as the earthmover crashed into the police station wall, 40 men with darkened faces and in combat jackets, apparently British troops and SAS commandos, emerged from a hiding place outside the station and opened fire.

Girls meeting in a nearby church hurled themselves to the ground as bullets smashed windows.

The attack came amid a renewed IRA offensive against police and security forces that killed 15 people in the last five weeks, including the province’s second-ranking judge.

The attack followed three straight nights of rioting by hundreds of IRA supporters in Belfast to protest the heavy police presence at the funeral Wednesday of an IRA guerrilla killed in a bungled grenade attack on a police station.