[1] On 28 October 1976, Ulster Freedom Fighters (UUF) militants shot and killed former Sinn Féin vice-president Máire Drumm at Mater Hospital in Belfast, while she was recovering from an eye operation.

[6][7] As well as the deaths and injuries, the blast from the explosion caused severe damage to both the Military Wing and the newly refurbished children's ward in the Withers block.

At least 97 operations due to have been performed that week were cancelled, 80 out of the 200 patient beds in the hospital were rendered unusable, and the damage totalling at least £250,000 (equivalent to £677,921 in 2023).

[8] The bombing was widely condemned and intensified growing calls for the re-introduction of internment without trial from Unionist politicians and some senior figures of the British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland.

The Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Gerry Collins said of the bombing: "An attack against a hospital must be regarded as a particularly heinous violation of the most basic standards of human decency.