18.2.05
Guardian
**Article from 19 February 1991, reprinted today
Man killed, 38 hurt, as IRA switches target to stations
Duncan Campbell, Crime Correspondent
Tuesday February 19, 1991
The Guardian
The IRA appeared to have changed its tactics yet again yesterday, with bomb attacks on two London mainline stations that left one dead and 38 injured in a rush-hour explosion at Victoria. Several hours earlier, a bomb had exploded without causing injury at Paddington.
All London's rail termini were closed, disrupting the journeys of 470,000 commuters and bringing chaos to the capital.
Hoax calls also closed Heathrow terminals and approach roads for several hours.
Last night the IRA admitted responsibility for the bombings.
A statement said: 'The cynical decision of senior personnel not to evacuate railway stations named in secondary warnings, even three hours after the warning device had exploded at Paddington in the early hours of this morning, was directly responsible for the casualties at Victoria.'
The IRA statement added: 'All future warnings should be acted upon.'
Police defended the decision not to close all stations after receiving warning that bombs had been planted. Commander George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad, said that dozens of hoax calls were received every day. 'It is very easy with hindsight to be critical.'
The first explosion, caused by a bomb of between 2-5lbs placed under hoardings at Paddington station, happened at 4.20am. The roof of the station was damaged but no one was injured. At about 7am, a man with an Irish accent phoned the London Transport travel centre in central London with a warning in which he said: 'We are the Irish Republican Army. Bombs to go off at all mainline stations in 45 minutes.'
Forty minutes later, a bomb hidden in a litter bin on the main concourse at Victoria exploded as police were carrying out a search, and while the rush hour was at its height.
The dead man, a commuter, was the father of a 16-month-old child. He was killed by a shrapnel wound to the chest. Thirty-eight other people were taken to hospital. One woman had her leg amputated below the knee and another had a foot amputated. The youngest victim was a 12-year-old boy.
Nineteen people were kept in hospital overnight, of whom two were said to be in a critical condition.
Mr Churchill-Coleman told a Scotland Yard press conference that the caller would have been aware that it would not be possible to search and find the device in the time given.
'This is the type of incident you expect from the Provisional IRA ,' he said. 'When they get desperate they resort to any kind of tactic.'
He said that last Friday 29 hoax calls were received. By the time of the Victoria explosion there had already been 19 calls.
Yesterday's caller used a code word which had not been used before. Hoax callers now routinely give a code word so it is not possible to tell which are genuine, said anti-terrorist sources yesterday.
Ian Macgregor, assistant chief constable of the British Transport police, said that as soon as the explosion at Paddington took place, officers started carrying out searches of all the other stations.
On the decision to keep the stations operating, he said: 'It is a matter of fine judgment and balance how much to inconvenience the travelling public every time a hoax bomb call comes in.' British Transport police received an average of six hoax calls a day.
The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, who visited Victoria after the explosion, said: 'The concourse of Victoria is covered in blood. This is the act of murderous criminals.'
He added: 'All decent people will feel the deepest sympathy for those so tragically harmed. I am appalled and disgusted by this vicious attack on people innocently going to work.'
The Queen expressed her condolences to the victims and their relatives in a message to Mr Baker.
Neil Kinnock condemned the attacks as a 'great horror, all the more so because they were clearly aimed to cause maximum harm to complete innocents.'
The Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, called the attacks 'vain and futile'.
The Irish premier, Charles Haughey, expressed his 'shock and revulsion' at the incident. Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, visited the injured in hospital and said that one of them was an Irish girl who had arrived in London yesterday.
Jimmy Knapp, general secretary of the rail union, RMT, questioned the security arrangements. 'There was a three-hour time difference between the explosions at Paddington and Victoria. If there was a direct warning 40 minutes before the Victoria explosion, what were the police doing?'
British Rail's chairman, Sir Bob Reid, who also visited the bombed stations, said: 'There are a number of evil forces operating in our country. What they want to do is to disrupt us. But this country has to go on operating because that's what we are made of.'
Scotland Yard last night responded to the IRA criticism of police tactics, saying: 'Those responsible for the death and injuries were those who planted the bombs.
'For the terrorists to blame the police for their own outrages is particularly galling and almost beggars belief.'
The explosions appear to represent a change in tactics by the IRA , whose last attack on a mainland civilian target was the Harrods bomb in London in December 1983, in which six people died. Random bombing of civilian targets, which in 1974/5 reached an average of an attack every week, was halted because IRA strategists believed it to be counter-productive.
**Article from 19 February 1991, reprinted today
Man killed, 38 hurt, as IRA switches target to stations
Duncan Campbell, Crime Correspondent
Tuesday February 19, 1991
The Guardian
The IRA appeared to have changed its tactics yet again yesterday, with bomb attacks on two London mainline stations that left one dead and 38 injured in a rush-hour explosion at Victoria. Several hours earlier, a bomb had exploded without causing injury at Paddington.
All London's rail termini were closed, disrupting the journeys of 470,000 commuters and bringing chaos to the capital.
Hoax calls also closed Heathrow terminals and approach roads for several hours.
Last night the IRA admitted responsibility for the bombings.
A statement said: 'The cynical decision of senior personnel not to evacuate railway stations named in secondary warnings, even three hours after the warning device had exploded at Paddington in the early hours of this morning, was directly responsible for the casualties at Victoria.'
The IRA statement added: 'All future warnings should be acted upon.'
Police defended the decision not to close all stations after receiving warning that bombs had been planted. Commander George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad, said that dozens of hoax calls were received every day. 'It is very easy with hindsight to be critical.'
The first explosion, caused by a bomb of between 2-5lbs placed under hoardings at Paddington station, happened at 4.20am. The roof of the station was damaged but no one was injured. At about 7am, a man with an Irish accent phoned the London Transport travel centre in central London with a warning in which he said: 'We are the Irish Republican Army. Bombs to go off at all mainline stations in 45 minutes.'
Forty minutes later, a bomb hidden in a litter bin on the main concourse at Victoria exploded as police were carrying out a search, and while the rush hour was at its height.
The dead man, a commuter, was the father of a 16-month-old child. He was killed by a shrapnel wound to the chest. Thirty-eight other people were taken to hospital. One woman had her leg amputated below the knee and another had a foot amputated. The youngest victim was a 12-year-old boy.
Nineteen people were kept in hospital overnight, of whom two were said to be in a critical condition.
Mr Churchill-Coleman told a Scotland Yard press conference that the caller would have been aware that it would not be possible to search and find the device in the time given.
'This is the type of incident you expect from the Provisional IRA ,' he said. 'When they get desperate they resort to any kind of tactic.'
He said that last Friday 29 hoax calls were received. By the time of the Victoria explosion there had already been 19 calls.
Yesterday's caller used a code word which had not been used before. Hoax callers now routinely give a code word so it is not possible to tell which are genuine, said anti-terrorist sources yesterday.
Ian Macgregor, assistant chief constable of the British Transport police, said that as soon as the explosion at Paddington took place, officers started carrying out searches of all the other stations.
On the decision to keep the stations operating, he said: 'It is a matter of fine judgment and balance how much to inconvenience the travelling public every time a hoax bomb call comes in.' British Transport police received an average of six hoax calls a day.
The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, who visited Victoria after the explosion, said: 'The concourse of Victoria is covered in blood. This is the act of murderous criminals.'
He added: 'All decent people will feel the deepest sympathy for those so tragically harmed. I am appalled and disgusted by this vicious attack on people innocently going to work.'
The Queen expressed her condolences to the victims and their relatives in a message to Mr Baker.
Neil Kinnock condemned the attacks as a 'great horror, all the more so because they were clearly aimed to cause maximum harm to complete innocents.'
The Liberal Democrat leader, Paddy Ashdown, called the attacks 'vain and futile'.
The Irish premier, Charles Haughey, expressed his 'shock and revulsion' at the incident. Cardinal Basil Hume, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, visited the injured in hospital and said that one of them was an Irish girl who had arrived in London yesterday.
Jimmy Knapp, general secretary of the rail union, RMT, questioned the security arrangements. 'There was a three-hour time difference between the explosions at Paddington and Victoria. If there was a direct warning 40 minutes before the Victoria explosion, what were the police doing?'
British Rail's chairman, Sir Bob Reid, who also visited the bombed stations, said: 'There are a number of evil forces operating in our country. What they want to do is to disrupt us. But this country has to go on operating because that's what we are made of.'
Scotland Yard last night responded to the IRA criticism of police tactics, saying: 'Those responsible for the death and injuries were those who planted the bombs.
'For the terrorists to blame the police for their own outrages is particularly galling and almost beggars belief.'
The explosions appear to represent a change in tactics by the IRA , whose last attack on a mainland civilian target was the Harrods bomb in London in December 1983, in which six people died. Random bombing of civilian targets, which in 1974/5 reached an average of an attack every week, was halted because IRA strategists believed it to be counter-productive.
