3 Soldiers Killed in Ulster Blast; IRA Suspected

A roadside blast killed three British soldiers on patrol in Northern Ireland on Saturday, hours after a car bomb at an English garrison town injured an army sergeant and his wife.

The sergeant lost both legs in the explosion, Essex county police said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility, but police and the Home Office suspected the outlawed Irish Republican Army, which has targeted army installations in England and continental Europe as well as in Northern Ireland in its bloody campaign to drive the British out of the province.

The British army patrol was in two armored vehicles in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains, about six miles from the Irish Republic, when an explosive device was detonated, apparently from beside the road, the Royal Ulster Constabulary said.

The blast hurled the first vehicle off the road. All of the casualties were in that vehicle, police said.

Helicopters flew into the area to help the injured soldiers, but three died before they could be treated, police said. A fourth was seriously injured and hospitalized in Belfast.

At the British army headquarters for eastern England in Colchester, 50 miles northeast of London, a car bomb exploded as Sgt. Andrew Mudd and his wife were setting out from the parking area at the married quarters, police said. The two were dragged from the burning wreckage of their car by a lieutenant who was driving past, witnesses said.

One neighbor said the car was “a mass of flames.”

The couple were taken to Colchester General Hospital, where General Manager Mark Shackell said Mudd had lost both legs and was in serious condition after 4 1/2 hours of surgery. He said Mudd’s wife, whose name was not released, suffered “relatively minor” injuries.

David Waddington, the Home Office secretary, blamed the IRA.

The Ministry of Defense stepped up security at military establishments across Britain after the Sept. 22 IRA bombing at the Royal Marines Music School in Deal, in southeast England, that killed 11.

The IRA has also claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on British soldiers and their families in West Germany.

A soldier’s wife was killed this summer and a 6-month-old girl died last month along with her father, a Royal Air Force corporal, in an IRA attack.