Cairo Gang

The Cairo Gang was a group of British Intelligence agents who were sent to Dublin during the Irish War of Independence to conduct intelligence operations against prominent members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Twelve people, including British Army officers, Royal Irish Constabulary officers and a civilian informant, were assassinated on the morning of 21 November 1920 by the IRA in a planned series of simultaneous early-morning strikes engineered by Michael Collins. The events were to form the first killings of Bloody Sunday.

Some Irish historians (such as Tim Pat Coogan and Conor Cruise O'Brien) dispute assertions of a common history of service in the Middle East as the reason for the unit's nom de guerre. It has been suggested that they received the name because they often held meetings at the Cairo Cafe at 59 Grafton Street in Dublin. Earlier books on the 1919-1923 period do not mention the Cairo gang as such and one mystery is where the name first occurs.