1980s 1990s Bloody Friday is the name given to the bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland on 21 July 1972, during the Troubles.

Ten days later, the British Army launched Operation Motorman, in which it re-took the no-go areas controlled by Republicans.

[4][5] In late June and early July 1972, a British government delegation led by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw held secret talks with the Provisional IRA leadership.

The IRA leaders sought a peace settlement that included a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland by 1975 and the release of republican prisoners.

According to the IRA's Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, the main goal of the bombing operation was to wreak financial harm.

At the height of the bombing, the middle of Belfast "resembled a city under artillery fire; clouds of suffocating smoke enveloped buildings as one explosion followed another, almost drowning out the hysterical screams of panicked shoppers".

The Welsh Guards patrol, based in the Grand Central Hotel, was thus mobilised just after 2:42pm and almost immediately got held up in traffic due to gridlock caused by the many bomb warnings.

They arrived at about 2:55pm, just six or seven minutes before the detonation, in an Armoured Personnel Carrier and began searching for the bomb car, assisted by some Ulsterbus employees.

Two British soldiers, Royal Corps of Transport driver Stephen Cooper (19) and Welsh Guards Sergeant Philip Price (27), were killed outright.

Some of the victims' bodies were torn to pieces by the blast, which led authorities to give an initial estimate of eleven deaths.

It blasted the six-storey Embassy Court building and dislodged a British Army observation post on the roof.

It said that the Public Protection Agency, the Samaritans and the press "were informed of bomb positions at least 30 minutes to one hour before each explosion".

[25] Mac Stíofáin said that "It required only one man with a loudhailer to clear each target area in no time" and alleged that the warnings for the two bombs that claimed lives were deliberately ignored by the British for "strategic policy reasons".

[20] According to an article in The Guardian, a warning of the Oxford Street bomb was heard over military radio almost an hour before the explosion.

It was attended by William Whitelaw, the British government's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; Peter Carrington, Secretary of State for Defence; Harry Tuzo, the British Army's commander in Northern Ireland; David Corbett, the acting chief of the RUC; and other advisers.

[10] That night, 2,000 British troops began carrying out raids on the homes of IRA suspects in Belfast.

On the Friday night, members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) took to the streets in Protestant areas and began carrying out "patrols" and setting up checkpoints.

[27] According to former RUC officer Jack Dale, a large group of people in the republican Markets area had "jeered and shouted and yelled" as if each explosion was "a good thing".

The Irish Times wrote, "The chief injury is not to the British Army, to the Establishment or to big business but to the plain people of Belfast and Ireland.

Television images of firefighters shovelling body parts into plastic bags at the Oxford Street bus station were the most shocking of the day.

[33]In The Longest War, author Kevin Kelley wrote that the IRA "had done irreparable damage to their cause – in Britain, abroad, and in their own communities.

The San Francisco Chronicle described the IRA as "a cowardly band of terrorists who bomb pubs, hotels, and barracks, shoot down men at night in the quiet of their own homes and beat up women."

The Dallas Morning News stated: The latest demonstration of calculated, cold-blooded beastliness in Belfast is such that it must shock even the most news-jaded American.

It was an act made more monstrous by the fact that it was committed not by monsters but by men who claim to be fighting for justice, freedom and tolerance.

[34]The attack alienated many Irish Americans who were previously sympathetic to the IRA following the Bloody Sunday massacre by British troops six months earlier.

Jim Williard wrote an article for The Christian Science Monitor on 13 July 1973, stating: [T]he battle cry of "Unite Ireland" once rallied Irish Americans throughout New England – but not anymore.

[35] IRA Chief of Staff, Seán Mac Stíofáin, said the civilian casualties "compromised the intended effect" of the bombings.

[4]Ten days after the bombings, the British Army launched Operation Motorman, in which it re-took IRA-controlled areas in Belfast and Derry, but also drove IRA members into the neighbouring Republic of Ireland, where they used the territory to carry out attacks on British targets in Northern Ireland and England throughout the remainder of the conflict.

[40] Parker was posthumously awarded the Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct as he had died while trying to warn others about the car bomb left outside the row of shops on Cavehill Road.