SAS shooting 'destroyed deadly IRA unit'

When the SAS gunned down eight IRA men as they prepared to blow up a Co Armagh police station in 1987, one of the Provisionals’ deadliest units was devastated.

A security source with inside knowledge of the East Tyrone brigade at the time, accused them of carrying out a spate of killings in what he dubbed the murder triangle.

‘‘The number of murders they had carried out had got out of control, the area had gone to the dogs,’’ the source said.

Among the terrorists gunned down at Loughgall as they approached the unmanned station in a hijacked digger carrying a 200lb bomb was brigade commander Patrick Kelly.

Another of the gang, James Lynagh, was described as a top assassin within the Provisionals’ ranks, who the RUC’s Special Branch had been hunting for six years.

Suspected of being involved in a spate of IRA operations in Co Tyrone in the months prior to Loughgall, he had previously been tried and acquitted in Dublin for the murder of former Ulster Defence Regiment member Henry Livingstone.

The killings of the paramilitaries, along with a passing civilian Anthony Hughes, caused outrage among relatives, who insisted the barracks being targeted were unmanned and troops were operating a shoot-to-kill policy.

But the security source insisted there was no alternative.

‘‘The IRA say they are an army, but we are too mealy-mouthed to say we have to respond accordingly,’’ he said.

‘‘You don’t send men out ill-prepared if people are trying to murder them.’’

And he backed the decision to use the SAS troops.

‘‘British soldiers and police couldn’t go down to the border at that time because of traps and ambushes at that time.

‘‘We couldn’t have done without them and they were more human than the IRA.’’