British Soldiers Killed by IRA Failed to Check Van for Bomb

The British soldiers who were killed Wednesday when an Irish Republican Army bomb blew up their van in Northern Ireland apparently failed to follow proper security procedures, British officials said Thursday.

The officials indicated that the six soldiers had left their van unguarded while they took part in a long-distance run for charity, then had failed to check the vehicle before driving away.

Five of the soldiers were killed instantly and the sixth later died of his wounds.

“Close attention to personal security is absolutely standard practice, and I think, tragically, it does seem today that it was not followed in this case,” Tom King, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, told reporters at the scene.

The bomb was apparently affixed with magnets to the underside of the van as it stood unattended in a parking lot in the town of Lisburn, south of Belfast. The British army’s Northern Ireland headquarters is in Lisburn.

The bomb exploded as the van, beginning the drive back to the soldiers’ base at Londonderry, moved away from a traffic light in downtown Lisburn. Ten civilians were wounded in the blast.

The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack, the most serious against the British military forces since the Irish National Liberation Army, an IRA splinter group, killed 11 soldiers and six civilians in the bombing of a discotheque in 1982.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in a formal statement to Parliament, condemned the attack as “a terrible atrocity.”

King and other members of Parliament pointed out that the death toll would have been much higher if the bomb had gone off in the parking lot where the bomb was put in place. Thousands of residents were milling about there after the race.

“But for the grace of God it would have been another Enniskillen,” said Kevin McNamara, the opposition Labor Party’s spokesman on Northern Ireland affairs. He referred to the explosion of an IRA bomb last November at a memorial service in the Northern Ireland town of Enniskillen. In that incident, 11 Protestants were killed and more than 60 others were injured.

The van bombing raised the death toll to 38 in this 20th year of Northern Ireland’s current campaign of sectarian violence. Since 1969, more than 2,600 people have died in fighting between groups from the province’s Roman Catholic minority and elements of the majority Protestant population.