Darkley Killings
The name was first used to claim responsibility for a shooting on 20 November 1983. That night, two masked men opened-fire outside Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church near Darkley, County Armagh. A church service was taking place at the time. Three Protestant civilians were shot dead at the entrance: Harold Brown (59), David Wilson (44) and Victor Cunningham (39). The gunmen then sprayed the church with bullets, wounding seven people.
A telephone caller claimed responsibility on behalf of the "Catholic Reaction Force". He said it was
...in retaliation for the murderous sectarian campaign carried out by the Protestant Action Force … by this token retaliation we could easily have taken the lives of at least 20 more innocent Protestants. We serve notice on the PAF to call an immediate halt to their vicious indiscriminate campaign against innocent Catholics, or we will make the Darkley killings look like a picnic.
The caller named nine Catholics who had been attacked or killed recently.
A week after, Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) leader Dominic McGlinchey gave an interview. He admitted that one of the gunmen had been an INLA member and admitted supplying him with the gun. The INLA member's brother had been killed by loyalists. McGlinchey explained that the INLA member asked him for a gun to shoot a known loyalist who'd been involved in sectarian killings. However, "clearly deranged by the death of his brother", he "used it instead to attack the Darkley Gospel Hall". McGlinchey said: "this INLA member was a brother of someone who had been killed…and he must have been unbalanced or something to have gone and organised this killing. We are conducting an enquiry into the whole affair".
The CRF declared a ceasefire on 28 October 1994.
Read more about this topic: Catholic Reaction Force
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