British major shot

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32703, 4 September 1971, Page 1

British major shot

(N.Z.P.A.-Rcuter— Copyright) BELFAST, Sept. 3. A British Army major was shot and seriously wounded by Republican terrorists in Londonderry early today. Major Robin Alers-Hankey, aged 35, of the Royal Green Jackets, added another sad chapter to the troubled history of Northern Ireland. He is the first commissioned officer to be seriously hurt

since tne latest wave or violence began in 1969. \ He was shot in the Stomach by a sniper’s bullet when leading a squad of troops in a minor confrontation with a group of stone-throwing youths. After an emergency operation, Major Alers-Hankey was described by an Army spokesman as still very seriously ill. Gunmen today shot dead a soldier serving with Northern Ireland’s part-time defence force. The soldier—a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment —was gunned down from a passing car as he stood on guard duty outside a police station in Kinawley, County Fermanagh. He was the second member of the regiment to be killed in Northern Ireland this year. The shootings were the most serious incidents in the

night, after , one of the worst terrorist outrages to date—a four-pronged bomb attack in Belfast’s busy shopping and commercial area which’ left 42 civilians injured. The four bombs exploded within seven minutea of each other in the Unionist Party headquarters, an office block and a car park Soon after noon yesterday. Scores of office girls, many of them injured by the blast, ran screaming from the buildings. In the streets shoppers stood stunned and weeping as they watched the injured being taken to hospital. Of the 42 injured, two were detained in hospital. The outrage was immedi-

ately condemned by the Northern Ireland Prime Minister (Mr Brian Faulkner), who called the explosions the work of sub-human animals. More significantly, the Irish Republic Prime Minister (Mr Jack Lynch) issued one of his strongest denunciations of terrorist violence. “No Irishman with the least claim to ideals or principles, no Irishman with the least share of Christianity or sanity, can justify or condone the maiming or killing of innocent people,” he said. In other incidents during the night a customs post in the border village of KiUcoean was blown up. Five armed men drove up to the post, threw two bombs through the door and escaped over the border into the Republic. No-oqe was hurt. The town of Coalisland was blacked out when a terrorist bomb destroyed an electricity transformer.