The blast sparked an immediate reaction by an undercover Special Air Service unit, who shot and wounded Gareth Doris, an Irish republican and alleged IRA volunteer.

[2] Coalisland is a town in County Tyrone that had a tradition of militant republicanism; five residents had been killed by British security forces before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994.

[7] At 9:40 pm on Wednesday 26 March 1997, a grenade[1] was thrown at the joint British Army/RUC base at Coalisland, blowing a hole in the perimeter fence.

[2] A number of men, apparently SAS soldiers, got out of civilian vehicles wearing baseball caps with "Army" stamped on the front.

Two women were wounded by plastic bullets[2] and the undercover soldiers then fled in unmarked cars, setting off crackers or fireworks at the same time.

[2][10] Sinn Féin councillor Francie Molloy claimed that the protesters forced the SAS to withdraw, saving Doris's life in the process.

Republican sources claimed that this was another case of shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces;[2] Ulster Unionist Party MP Ken Maginnis, however, praised the SAS for their actions.

[20] DNA evidence collected in the area of the shooting led to the arrest of Coalisland native Paul Campbell by the PSNI in 2015, on the charges of being the other man with Doris during the attack.

The prosecutor acknowledged that Campbell would have been released by that time under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, but argued that that was a decision for the parole commission, not the court.

[21] On 5 July 1997, on the eve of the 1997 nationalist riots in Northern Ireland, the British Army/RUC base was the scene of another attack, when an IRA volunteer engaged an armoured RUC vehicle with gunfire beside the barracks.