A roadside bomb destroyed a van carrying 14 construction workers who had been repairing a British Army base in Omagh.

On 5 February, the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) retaliated by shooting dead five Catholics at a betting shop in Belfast.

Since the beginning of its campaign in 1970, the Provisional IRA had launched frequent attacks on British Army and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) bases in Northern Ireland.

Three men, who worked for the security forces, were tied into cars loaded with explosives and ordered to drive to British Army checkpoints while their families were held at gunpoint.

[7] When the van reached the rural Teebane Crossroads, just after 5PM, IRA volunteers detonated a roadside bomb containing an estimated 600 pounds (270 kg) of home-made explosives in two plastic barrels.

Since 1985 the IRA has adopted a policy of taking military action aimed at ending Britain's cynical use of non-military personnel for the servicing and maintenance of British Crown Forces' bases and installations … for our part, we in the IRA will not tolerate a situation where military personnel are freed from essential services and maintenance tasks and then deployed where they can carry out wholesale repression within our community.

[7] British Prime Minister John Major visited Northern Ireland within days and promised more troops, pledging that the IRA would not change government policy.

It struck with deadly ferocity and effect and would have been extremely intimidating to others contemplating taking jobs on bombed-out RUC and British Army buildings […] this bomb also served as a warning to loyalist paramilitaries who had carried out a succession of killings in Tyrone.

On 5 February, two masked men armed with an automatic rifle and revolver entered Sean Graham's betting shop on Ormeau Road, Belfast.

It found that the IRA unit had initially planned to carry out the attack on the morning of 17 January as the workers made their way to work but, due to fog, it was put off until the evening.

Survivor Bobby O'Neill, who received serious injuries in the blast, told the RUC that as he lay injured on the ground, he had seen a "bearded man" appear at the scene of the bombing.

The man dispassionately walked through the van's wreckage, showing no compassion or emotion as he gazed upon each of the bodies of the dead and injured and made no attempt to help the wounded.

In January 2012, on the 20th anniversary of the attack, Democratic Unionist Party MLA, Trevor Clarke, whose brother-in-law Nigel McKee at age 22 was the youngest person killed in the bombing, demanded that republicans provide the names of the IRA bombers.