Analysis: IRA admitted that years of carnage among civilians damaged its cause

Bloody Friday is remembered both for the scale of the casualties inflicted by the IRA bombs and the televised scenes of horror, which included the sight of rescue workers collecting pieces of human flesh in plastic bags.

Bloody Friday is remembered both for the scale of the casualties inflicted by the IRA bombs and the televised scenes of horror, which included the sight of rescue workers collecting pieces of human flesh in plastic bags.

Nine people were killed when the IRA detonated 20 devices in just over an hour in different parts of Belfast, generating panic throughout the city.

Coming a few months after Bloody Sunday, when civilians in Londonderry were killed by British paratroopers, in political terms it reduced the legitimacy claimed by the IRA.

Yet despite its horror, it has never been the subject of the attention and commemoration that has been given to many other incidents in the Troubles. This year was to be different, however, in that newspapers and television stations were preparing to mark its 30th anniversary.

The nine fatalities of the day were caused by two of the 20 bombs. A car bomb that exploded at Oxford Street station, one of the city's busiest bus depots, killed four bus company employees and two soldiers. Another car bomb that went off outside shops in north Belfast killed two women and a 14-year-old schoolboy. All 20 devices went off within an hour and a quarter during the afternoon. Many of those hurt were shoppers, with 77 women and a number of children among those injured.

The episode was seen as a huge setback for the IRA, which was viewed as pursuing its aims through sheer terror and indiscriminate bombings apparently designed to cause maximum loss of life.

Such scenes were to become all too familiar in the decades that followed as the IRA waged its "long war", intended to force the British out of Ireland. Its main targets were soldiers and police, but it had also developed a long list of what it deemed "legitimate targets", of whom it killed hundreds.

These included judges and magistrates, prison officers, former members of the police, Army and Ulster Defence Regiment, and others. More than a dozen security-force suppliers, contractors and workmen were killed, the IRA placing on its death list "those in the Civil Service, fuel contractors, caterers and food contractors, transport, ie shipping and bus companies who ferry British soldiers and UDR men back and forth from Britain, cleaning contractors, those who supply and maintain vending machines and anyone else who takes on Ministry of Defence or Northern Ireland Office contracts." There have also been instances of IRA victims who, while technically connected to the security force, would by most standards be graded as non-combatants, such as a naval recruiting officer killed in Belfast last year.

There is also a generally disregarded category of victims who have died, almost incidentally, alongside the intended IRA targets. They include Lady Gibson, who died in the explosion that killed her husband, Lord Justice Gibson, a senior judge.

When Lord Mountbatten was killed in an explosion on a boat off Sligo in 1979, three other people died with him: the 82-year-old Dowager Baroness of Brabourne, Nicholas Brabourne, his 15-year-old grandson, and Paul Maxwell, a 15-year-old local boy.

Those who are often most frequently remembered are the large number of civilians killed when major IRA operations "go wrong". These include the casualties of the Enniskillen bombing in 1987 and three members of a family – father, mother and child – who were killed in an IRA attempt to kill a judge.

The IRA was not the only taker of civilian life during the Troubles; the Army, and to a lesser extent the police, also contributed to the civilian toll. Civilians were very much at risk from loyalist paramilitary groups, since their primary targets were Catholics, often selected at random. But during the Troubles not a year went by without civilians being killed or injured by the IRA.

The organisation knew that civilian casualties were bad for business and hit at its support both at home and abroad, yet its leaders accepted that the use of bombs and bullets would inevitably take civilian lives.

After Enniskillen, one IRA leader acknowledged the damage: "Politically and internationally it is a major setback. Our central base can take a hell of a lot of jolting and crises, with limited demoralisation. But the outer reaches are just totally devastated.

"We were trying to convince people there that what's happening in the north is a legitimate armed struggle. But the obloquy we've attracted cuts the ground from under us."

The IRA statement in full:

"Sunday, 21 July marks the 30th anniversary of an IRA operation in Belfast in 1972 which resulted in nine people being killed and many more injured.

While it was not our intention to injure or kill non- combatants, the reality is that on this and on a number of other occasions, that was the consequence of our actions. It is, therefore, appropriate on the anniversary of this tragic event that we address all of the deaths and injuries of non-combatants caused by us. We offer our sincere apologies and condolences to their families.

There have been fatalities amongst combatants on all sides. We also acknowledge the grief and pain of their relatives. The future will not be found in denying collective failures and mistakes or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who have been hurt. That includes all of the victims of the conflict, combatants and non-combatants. It will not be achieved by creating a hierarchy of victims in which some are deemed more or less worthy than others.

The process of conflict resolution requires the equal acknowledgement of the grief and loss of others. On this anniversary, we are endeavouring to fulfil this responsibility to those we have hurt. The IRA is committed unequivocally to the search for freedom, justice and peace in Ireland. We remain totally committed to the peace process and to dealing with the challenges and difficulties which this presents. This includes the acceptance of past mistakes and of the hurt and pain we have caused to others."

The statement is signed "P O'Neill, Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin."