Violence grows in Ulster again

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33775, 22 February 1975, Page 15

Violence grows in Ulster again

(New Zealand Press Association—Copgright)

BELFAST, February 21.

Terrorist bombers killed a man and wounded 25 people, eight of them seriously, in attacks on two Roman Catholic-owned bars in Belfast, the Associated Press reported.

Two other men were killed and two persons, one a little girl, were wounded by gunfire in 24 hours of violence that has been steadily intensifying since the Provisional wing of the mainly Roman Catholic I.R.A. declared the truce on February 10, police said.

The attacks late last night, threatened the 11-day-old Irish Republican Army cease-fire in Northern Ireland.

So far, at least six people, nearly all Catholics, have been' killed since February 10. The latest killings raised the known death toll in the province’s bitter 51 year sectarian bloodletting to .at least 1161. Government and security officials feared that this spate of attacks on Catholics could force the I.R.A.’s provisionals into calling off the truce and resuming their bloody campaign to end British rule in Protestantdominated Ulster. “Things are getting alarmingly touchy,” one Government source commented.

Yesterday’s bombings: were the bloodiest incidents; since February 10. Police detectives strongly suspected Protestant extremists were responsible. The first blast was at the Starry Plough tavern in the Roman Catholic New Lodge quarter of Belfast. The bombers planted a beer keg packed with about 30 pounds of explosives outside the door, police said. The explosion scythed down drinkers in the bar, owned by a prominent Republican Jim Okane, and a well-known haunt of the

i I.R.A. s Marxist official I wing. i A woman had both legs torn off and three other people were rushed to hospital for emergency surgery, police said. Altogether 14 people were wounded. A woman claiming to represent the young militants, a little known group of extremist Protestant teenagers, claimed responsibility for the bombing in a telephone call to a Belfast newspaper. The second blast was at the railway bar in the Greencastle district of north Belfast. Police said that it was dumped in a bag in the hall. A customer spotted it and shouted a warning, but it exploded as he yelled out. It blew down a wall, trapping several people under a pile of rubble. Twelve people were wounded, police reported. One, identified as Gerald McGowan, died two hours later in hospital. Police sources said that a car seen near the tavern just before the blast was later found abandoned in the fiercely Protestant Rathcoole quarter of the city. The bombings came a few hours after Hugh Ferguson, a 19 year old workman, was killed by two hooded gunmen on a construction site in the Roman Catholic Ballymurphy quarter on the west side. He was a prominent member of the Irish Republican Socialist party, a group that broke away from the I.R.A.'s Marxist official wing last year in an ideological feud. Some security sources suspected that yesterday’s violence could be a worsening vendetta between the official I.R.A. and the breakaway Socialists. They theorised that the Starry Plough bombing was linked to Ferguson’s death. The officials have generally observed a truce for 21 years.