Irish victims ignored in Operation Banner report

YOUR report (July 31), like most reports, on the British Army’s Operation Banner, gave the number of British soldiers killed but didn’t include the number of Irish citizens killed by British Forces either directly or as a result of collusion. In both cases, the vast majority (more than 80%) were unarmed civilians.

Similarly, the name of the first soldier killed in 1971 was given but there was no mention of even one of the names of any of the five unarmed civilians killed by the British Army before then. Is the life of an armed British soldier still more important than that of an unarmed Irish civilian?

Incidentally, the first British soldier killed in the Troubles was Hugh McCabe, a 20-year-old from Divis Flats in Belfast who was home on leave when he was shot by the RUC when they machine-gunned Divis Flats on August 15, 1969, one of the many killings by the RUC which led to Operation Banner.