Casualties
According to official sources, 314 officers were killed and over 9000 were injured during the history of the RUC. All but 12 of the dead were killed in the Troubles (1969 to 1998), of whom 277 were killed in attacks by Irish republican groupings. However, according to the CAIN project at the University of Ulster, 301 active RUC officers were killed and 18 ex-RUC officers, which would total 319 fatalities during the Troubles.
Twenty former RUC officers were killed by acts of terrorism after leaving the service while two members of the Police Authority and three of its employees were killed between 1972 and 1994.
The Newry mortar attack by the Provisional IRA on an RUC station in 1985, which killed nine officers, resulted in the highest number of deaths inflicted on the RUC in one incident.
The two highest-ranking RUC officers to be killed in the Troubles were Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Robert Buchanan when they were ambushed by the Provisional IRA South Armagh Brigade outside Jonesborough, County Armagh, on 20 March 1989.
The last RUC officer to be killed as a direct result of the conflict died on the 6 October 1998, a month after he had been injured in a Red Hand Defenders pipe-bomb attack in Portadown.
Read more about this topic: Royal Ulster Constabulary