Provisionals 'emerged from back streets'

The Provisional IRA emerged from the back streets of Belfast and Derry to become one of the most effective and ruthless killing machines in post-war Europe.

The organisation was created in 1969 after it split from the official IRA which was accused at the time by many young Catholics of failing their community in the quest for civil rights back in the late 60s and early 70s.

Martin McGuinness, who was in Washington today to brief Irish Americans on the the IRA statement, became a legendary street fighter in his home city of Derry before becoming one of the most powerful and influential men in the republican movement.

But this was the organisation responsible for some of the worst terrorist atrocities in the North and was to blame for more deaths than any other armed group in the country.

One of the darkest early days of the Troubles, in July 1972, became known as Bloody Friday.

A series of blasts went off across Belfast killing nine people and injuring dozens more.

It proved to be the first in many major atrocities which would spanned three decades.

Two years later, in October 1974, it became clear the bloodshed would not be confined to the North as a bomb exploded in a pub in Guilford, Surrey.

Five people were killed and more than 40 were injured.

The following month the Birmingham pub bombings claimed 19 lives.

In August 1979 the Provisionals claimed arguably their most high-profile victim as a bomb planted on a boat killed Lord Mountbatten, the Queen’s uncle, and three others in Co Sligo.

On the same day, the IRA killed 18 soldiers killed in bomb attack at Warrenpoint, Co Down.

The Provisionals continued to terrorise England.

An IRA bomb exploded in Harrods in central London in December 1983.

The blast killed six people in the middle of the store’s Christmas shopping season.

In October, 1984, the Provisionals staged one of the most audacious acts of terrorism in its history by attempting to wipe out Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government during the Tory party conference in Brighton.

Five people, including the Tory MP Sir Anthony Berry, were killed in the Grand Hotel blast.

Mrs Thatcher narrowly escaped death but, in an act of defiance against the terror group, went ahead with her keynote speech just hours later.

Among the most devastating acts of terrorism during the Troubles was the Enniskillen massacre in November 1989.

Eleven people lost their lives during the Remembrance Day parade in Co Fermanagh.

The Provisionals attracted further condemnation in March 1993 when they targeted Saturday shoppers in Warrington, Cheshire.

Two children, Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry, were killed in the bomb blast.

In October of the same year nine civilians were died when an IRA bomb exploded prematurely in Frizell’s fish shop on the Protestant Shankill Road.

Bomber Sean Kelly’s IRA accomplice, Thomas Begley, was also killed, in one of the most notorious atrocities of the Troubles.

But on August 31, 1994, the IRA made headlines across the globe as it announced a “complete cessation of military operations”.

The landmark announcement paved the way for the decommissioning of weapons, a process which former US Senator George Mitchell was tasked with overseeing.

Hopes of peace in the North were shattered two years later when the IRA called off its ceasefire by detonating a bomb in London’s Docklands, which killed two people and caused millions of pounds worth of damage.

The following July the ceasefire was reinstated, paving the way for the ground-breaking Good Friday Agreement, which was signed on April 10, 1998.

Four months later, a bomb planted by the breakaway Real IRA exploded in the Co Tyrone Market town of Omagh.

In the worst single atrocity of the Troubles, 29 people died.

Since the Good Friday Agreement the Northern Ireland Assembly has been unable to gain any momentum and, after several false starts, has been in limbo since November 2002.

But it is widely hoped today’s historic announcement, that the IRA is to decommission its weapons, will finally deliver peace to a community scarred by three decades of bloodshed.