Bloody Friday (1972)
Bloody Friday is the name given to the bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast on 21 July 1972. Twenty-two bombs exploded in the space of eighty minutes, killing nine people (including two British soldiers) and injuring 130. The majority of these were car bombs, driven to their detonation sites that same day. The bombings were partly a response to the breakdown of talks between the IRA and the British government. Since the beginning of its campaign in 1969, the IRA had carried out a concerted bombing campaign against economic, military and political targets in Northern Ireland. It carried out a total of 1,300 bombings in 1972. Bloody Friday was the spur for Operation Motorman, launched by the British Army ten days later.
Read more about Bloody Friday (1972): Overview, Timeline, Reactions and Consequences
Famous quotes containing the words bloody and/or friday:
“And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)