1980s 1990s The Shankill Road bombing was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 23 October 1993 and is one of the most well-known incidents of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The IRA aimed to assassinate the leadership of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA), supposedly attending a meeting above Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road, Belfast.

The targeted office was empty at the time of the bombing, but the IRA had allegedly realised that the tightly packed area below would inevitably cause "collateral damage" of civilian casualties and continued regardless.

Loyalists saw this process as a serious threat to their position within the United Kingdom from what they labelled the "pan-nationalist front" (allegedly encompassing the SDLP, Sinn Fein, the Irish government, and even the Gaelic Athletic Association).

Throughout the autumn of 1993, loyalist paramilitaries intensified their campaign of bombings and shootings against the Catholic community in Northern Ireland, particularly in North and West Belfast.

[10] However, nationalist politicians, such as SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon, pointed out that loyalist paramilitaries had been carrying out indiscriminate sectarian murders long before the emergence of the Hume–Adams talks.

We in the IRA will under no circumstances play into British hands by going down the cul-de-sac of sectarian warfare, which would allow our enemy to portray itself as somehow holding the ring between warring factions in Ireland.

[1] The IRA had already tried to assassinate Johnny Adair on three separate occasions in 1993[17] and, three days before the Shankill Road bomb, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) arrested an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) hit squad near his home.

[18] An interview Adair gave to The Guardian newspaper bestowed the IRA's plans even greater urgency; striking at the UDA's headquarters, killing Adair and other senior UDA men mere days after he had boasted about killing Catholics in a national newspaper would be the "ideal rebuttal" to the growing criticism the IRA faced in Catholic Belfast and in the organisation's own ranks.

[20] Reportedly, the IRA made the final decision to launch the operation when one of their scouts spotted Adair entering the building on the morning of Saturday 23 October 1993.

[1][2] The plan allegedly was for two IRA members to enter the shop with a time bomb, force out the customers at gunpoint, and flee before it exploded, killing those at the meeting.

[14][15] The initial plan was to rake the building with a 12.7mm DShK heavy machine gun mounted to a lorry, but the odds of the IRA members involved being killed or captured by British security forces afterwards made it too risky.

The upper floor came down upon those inside the shop, crushing many of the survivors under the rubble, where they remained until rescued some hours later by volunteers and emergency services.

[1] Unknown to the IRA, if a UDA meeting had taken place, it had ended early[15][2] and those attending it had left the building before the bomb exploded.

One senior British security source commented afterwards: The difference between that [the Shankill bombing] being a disaster and a stunning success in IRA terms was very marginal.

McQuiston told journalist Peter Taylor that "anybody on the Shankill Road that day, from a Boy Scout to a granny, if you'd given them a gun they would have gone out and retaliated".

[14] Two days after the bombing, as Adair was driving away from his house, he stopped and told a police officer, "I'm away to plan a mass murder".

[28] On 26 October, the UDA shot dead another two Catholic civilians and wounded five in an indiscriminate attack at a Council Depot on Kennedy Way, Belfast.

[8] Michael Stone and another UDA member said that Adair also vowed to launch simultaneous attacks on Catholics attending mass in Belfast.

They believe the goal was to cause mass civilian casualties, weakening those in the IRA who opposed a ceasefire and who wanted to continue the armed campaign.