IRA Shells Home of British Prime Minister : Terrorism: Major and his War Cabinet are safe, and there is little damage when three mortars are fired from a van at No. 10 Downing St. Four others are only slightly hurt.

Irish Republican Army terrorists fired three makeshift mortars at No. 10 Downing St., the official residence of British Prime Minister John Major, as he met with his War Cabinet on Thursday morning, but the apparent assassination attempt failed.

Major and the Cabinet members were shaken but unhurt when a mortar round exploded in the enclosed garden outside their meeting room.

Three policemen and a civil servant suffered minor injuries.

The shells were lofted through the roof of a van that was parked nearby among Great Britain’s most important government buildings. Two of the shells landed on the nearby Foreign Office green and failed to detonate fully, Scotland Yard said, and the third shook the historic prime minister’s residence and broke windows but did relatively little damage.

The van exploded after a man reportedly ran from it and fled on the back of a motorcycle.

As an icy blast from a rare snowstorm blew into the Cabinet room through sprung windows, Major reportedly said: “I think we’d better start again somewhere else.”

The government ministers then moved to a more secure room in the building and finished their meeting, a spokeswoman said.

The IRA later released a statement in Dublin, claiming responsibility for the attack. A Scotland Yard official agreed that it was the work of the IRA.

Later, in a report to the House of Commons, Major declared that he had only contempt for the IRA terrorists and said the assault was “a deliberate attempt to kill the Cabinet and damage the democratic system.”

“It’s about time they learned that democracies cannot be intimidated by terrorism, and we rightly treat them with contempt,” he said.

His views were seconded by Labor opposition leader Neil Kinnock, who declared: “These terrorist attacks are criminal, cowardly and pointless. They will change nothing, and the misery which the terrorists seek to cause is simply proof of their cruelty.”

In a rare political comment as she appeared at a London hospital opening, Queen Elizabeth II also condemned the attack and said the bombers would never “undermine Britain’s democratic system.”

The IRA had previously tried to kill a prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in 1984 by planting a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton during a Conservative Party conference. Thatcher escaped but the blast killed five others--including a member of Parliament and the wife of another member--in addition to wounding 30 people.

On Thursday, Thatcher, visiting Los Angeles for former President Ronald Reagan’s 80th birthday, spoke with reporters at the J. W. Marriott hotel in Century City after a breakfast meeting with Vice President Dan Quayle.

“Their calculated, coldblooded attack failed totally and will (be) met with even greater resolution to defeat the terrorists,” Thatcher said.

“I am so very thankful that the attack did not succeed and that no one was seriously hurt.”

John Houlton, a spokesman for the British consulate in Los Angeles, said that, when Thatcher first learned of the attack, she “immediately contacted Downing Street and spoke to the P.M. (prime minister) to express her shock and thankfulness that the attack had not been successful and that everyone, ministers and staff who serve so loyally, were safe.”

Thursday’s attack came shortly after 10 a.m. when a small, white transit van parked at the intersection of Horse Guards Avenue and Whitehall in the midst of government ministries and near the Ministry of Defense.

The driver pulled a tarpaulin from the top of the Ford van, exposing a section of roof that had been cut away, and quickly fired three rounds of mortar from tubes fixed to the floor of the vehicle.

One mortar round landed about 200 yards away in the walled garden behind No. 10, the office-residence of the prime minister, which serves the same function as the White House in Washington.

The projectile, with a charge estimated at 100 pounds, exploded with a roar that cratered the lawn, scorched the wall, destroyed a cherry tree, rattled the windows, and fluttered the mail slot at the front of No. 10. The blast was heard over much of central London.

Two other mortar rounds landed in a lawn just beyond No. 10 known as the Mountbatten Green, across from the Foreign Office, and fizzled like “a flare,” a passerby said.

The explosions broke windows at No. 12 Downing St., working residence of the Parliamentary Chief Whip, and shook up No. 11, home of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Four people were reported to have been slightly injured by flying glass.

After firing the three missiles, the van driver fled aboard the waiting motorcycle, eyewitnesses said, and the van burst into flame and burned for at least 15 minutes. Police were unclear whether the driver had set off an explosive device or the fire was caused by the mortar blasts.

The van, police spokesman Steward Goodwin said, had been purchased for cash in July by three men. He said the launch site on Horse Guards Avenue apparently had been carefully selected.

And Commander George Churchill-Coleman, head of the anti-terrorist squad, declared: “It was a well-planned but badly executed operation.”

Police immediately blocked off Whitehall, along which are situated Downing Street, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office, the Treasury, the Ministry of Defense and other government offices.

The sealing off of the area from Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square, and between the River Thames and St. James Park, caused the snowbound city traffic to become even more unmanageable.

At first, some police sources thought the blast might have been instigated by Iraqi terrorists because of Britain’s substantial role in providing troops for the Gulf conflict.

But in Belfast later, unidentified callers phoned the Press Assn. news agency, declaring that they spoke for the IRA and claiming responsibility.

“What happened today has nothing to do with Iraq or the Gulf War,” said Richard McAuley, a spokesman for Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA in Belfast.

“The struggle for the rights of this small nation (Ireland) has gone on a lot longer than the one in the Middle East.” He referred to the IRA’s continuing demand that Britain withdraw from Northern Island.

McAuley’s remarks recalled similar ones made after the Grand Hotel blast, when an anonymous IRA member declared: “Today, we were unlucky. But remember, we only have to be lucky once.”

At the time of the attack, Major was meeting with the so-called War Cabinet: Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Defense Secretary Tom King, Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Treasury Chief Secretary David Mellor, Atty. Gen. Sir Patrick Mayhew, Energy Secretary John Wakeham and other senior officials and military officers.

Major sat at a table facing the windows and garden.

Mellor, who was reporting on financial aid for the Gulf commitment, said there was a loud explosion--about 60 feet away--the sound of shuddering windows, a blast of cold air and then silence.

After Major suggested starting again “somewhere else,” the Cabinet departed “with as much dignity as we could muster,” Mellor said, and reassembled in the other room.

Eyewitness Jim Bishop, who was working at the Defense Ministry, said: “Part of the top of the van, about three feet square, flew back, and three missiles shot out and headed across the road. They cleared the road, heading off toward St. James Park. Then the van went up in flames. The van was the only explosion I heard.”

A bus driver, Pravin Pratel, who was approaching the scene, said: “A bang came through the roof of the van and then a missile, and then it broke out in flames.”

The method of attack--mortar pipes mounted on a truck--had not been used in England before, though it had been employed by IRA members against policemen in Northern Ireland.

In 1985, a makeshift mortar attack fired six missiles on a police station in Newry, south of Belfast, and killed nine members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

However, the homemade weapons are unreliable and are thought to have been responsible for the deaths of IRA members in premature explosions.

The mortar bombs, as they are called by the British, can be lobbed over the roofs of intervening buildings, but they do not carry their own propellant--like Scud missiles used by the Iraqis in the Middle East.

Instead, they are fired from tubes by fixed explosive charges and are sometimes triggered by electrical timers.

Some members of Parliament questioned security arrangements that would allow such an attack at the heart of the British government at a time when security already was considered tight.

Home Secretary Kenneth Baker announced in the Commons that security around Whitehall and Westminster would be re-examined, but he said there was a limit to safety measures that could be taken without disrupting ordinary life.

Baker said the IRA had “attempted to strike at the heart of our government. They have failed.”

“This is something that hasn’t happened on our island before, and we will have to examine this incident very carefully, indeed, to see what we can gain from it,” he said.

Other officials pointed out that not every vehicle entering the center of London could be searched--no more than could trucks moving along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

As Paddy Ashdown, head of the Liberal Democrats in Parliament, declared later: “This is an outrage. But you can’t have watertight security in a democratic, open society. We won’t let this shake us any more than the people of Belfast let attacks shake them.”

BACKGROUND

The Irish Republican Army, one of the word’s most notorious terrorist organizations, has its roots in armed resistance to British rule during the 1916 Easter Rebellion in Dublin. By 1920, pursuing a campaign of political violence, the IRA had helped force concessions from Britain and a pledge of independence for Ireland’s 26 southernmost counties. But the failure of Irish negotiators to hold out for inclusion in the Irish Republic of the six Protestant-dominated northern counties enraged many IRA leaders. Casting themselves as defenders of Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholic minority, they have fought for a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland ever since.