Provisional IRA Retaliation
With the IRA ceasefire looming, the Provisionals staged a series of high profile assassinations, which include a number of top members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA); Ray Smallwoods, Joe Bratty and his right-hand man Raymond Elder were shot and killed in July. It was claimed that these were revenge killings for the Loughinisland massacre. The IRA stated that Smallwoods was directing UDA's shootings against Catholics, while Progressive Unionist leader David Ervine condemned the attack as a "totally cynical exercise" given Smallwoods' work towards peace. The deaths led to a temporary return to tit-for-tat violence.
Read more about this topic: Loughinisland Massacre
Famous quotes containing the word retaliation:
“The retaliation is apt to be in monstrous disproportion to the supposed offense; for when in anybody was revenge in its exactions aught else but an inordinate usurer?”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)