Shot IRA bombers ‘fired at SAS first’

A report of an investigation into the shootings by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), set up to investigate unsolved killings in Northern Ireland, will be handed to relatives of the Provisionals who died, and the family of an innocent civilian caught up in the gunfire outside Loughgall RUC station, Co Armagh, in May 1987.

It was always believed that SAS soldiers hiding in nearby fields fired the first shots as the IRA men retreated after bombing the station using a hijacked digger to carry the bomb and smash through a perimeter fence.

Most of them were inside a van which was sprayed with bullets.

The report is expected to claim the IRA men could not have been safely arrested and the soldiers were within their rights to shoot.

The eight men belonged to the East Tyrone brigade – one of the most feared IRA units – heavily involved in a series of attacks on police and soldiers at the time.

A ninth man, Anthony Hughes, an innocent passer-by who was driving home, was also killed.

East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell said the eight IRA men deserved to die, infuriating a Sinn Fein member of the Northern Ireland Assembly whose wife’s brother, Patrick Kelly, 30, from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, was among the eight shot dead.

Barry McElduff said Mr Campbell’s “gloating” was unacceptable, adding: “The men killed at Loughgall were victims of a British government policy of shoot-to-kill. Nobody believes the British Army unit were sent into Loughgall that evening to arrest anybody.

“They were sent there to kill the IRA unit, and that’s what they did.

“The families of those killed at Loughgall deserve the truth. They do not deserve continuing cover-up and concealment by the British Government or by the HET.

“The fact that this report was leaked to the media before being given to the families says much about the intent of the HET with regard to this investigation.”