La Mon restaurant bombing

On 17 February 1978, an IRA unit planted an incendiary bomb attached to petrol-filled canisters on meat hooks outside the window of the Peacock Room in the restaurant of the La Mon House Hotel, located at Comber, County Down, about 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of central Belfast.[3] After planting the bomb, the IRA members tried to send a warning from the nearest public telephone, but found that it had been vandalised.[4][5] On their way to another telephone they were delayed again when forced to stop at an Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) checkpoint.[5]

By the time they were able to send the warning, only nine minutes remained before the bomb exploded at 21:00.[3] The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) base at Newtownards had received two further telephone warnings at 20:57 and 21:04.[6] By the time the latter call came in it was too late. When an officer telephoned the restaurant to issue the warning he was told "For God's sake, get out here – a bomb has exploded!".[6] It has been stated that the IRA were targeting RUC officers they believed were meeting in the restaurant that night, but had got the wrong date and that the meeting of RUC officers had taken place exactly a week before.[7]

That evening the two main adjoining function rooms, the Peacock Room and Gransha Room, were packed with people of all ages attending dinner dances. Including the hotel guests and staff, there was a total of 450 people inside the building.[3] The diners had just finished their first course when the bomb detonated, shattering the window outside of which it was attached and vaporising the canisters. The explosion created an instantaneous and devastating fireball of blazing petrol, 40 feet high and 60 feet wide, which engulfed the Peacock Room.[8] Twelve people were killed, having been virtually burnt alive,[4][9] and some 30 others were injured, many critically. Some of the wounded lost limbs, but for the most part received severe burns. One badly burnt survivor described the inferno inside the restaurant as "like a scene from hell", whilst another who lost her daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law, Ian McCracken, said the blast was "like the sun had exploded in front of my eyes". There was further pandemonium after the lights had gone out and choking black smoke filled the room. The survivors, with their hair and clothing on fire, rushed to escape the burning room. It took firemen almost two hours to put out the blaze.[8] The dead were all Protestant civilians. Half were young married couples. Most of the dead and injured were members of the Irish Collie Club and the Northern Ireland Junior Motor Cycle Club, holding their yearly dinner dances in the Peacock Room and Gransha Room, respectively. The former took the full force of the explosion and subsequent fire; many of those who died had been seated nearest the window where the bomb had gone off. Some of the injured were still receiving treatment 20 years later.[3]

The device was a small blast bomb attached to four large petrol canisters, each filled with a home-made napalm-like substance of petrol and sugar. This was designed to stick to whatever it hit, a combination which caused severe burn injuries. The victims were found beneath a pile of hot ash and charred beyond recognition,[8] making identity extremely difficult as all their individual human features had been completely burned away.[3][10]

Some of the bodies had shrunk so much in the intense heat, it was first believed that there were children among the victims. One doctor who saw the remains described them as being like "charred logs of wood".[8] According to a published account by retired RUC Detective Superintendent Kevin Benedict Sheehy, this type of device had already been used by the IRA in more than one hundred attacks on commercial buildings before the La Mon attack.[11]