Wood Green Shopping City bombing

The IRA had stepped up their bombing campaign in England in late 1992. On 12 October the Sussex Arms bombing killed one person and injured four. On 30 October they exploded a small bomb near Downing Street.[1] On 14 November the IRA attempted to plant a large 1,000 pound bomb in London but were prevented by the police a day later they were again prevented from planting a bomb at Canary Wharf.[2] On the 3 December the IRA exploded the 1992 Manchester bombing which injured about 65 people. A week after the Wood Green Shopping City bombing the IRA detonated two bombs in London, the first at a John Lewis store on Oxford Street injured four people and 15 minutes later a bomb in a litter bin near Cavendish Square injured three more people.[3][4][5]

On 10 December 1992 one of the London based Active Service Units of the Provisional IRA (PIRA or IRA) detonated two small bombs in litter bins outside the shopping centre.[6] The bombs were in two separate litter bins about 200 yards away from each other just outside the shopping center. The bombs went off while police were still evacuating people from the area after they received three different telephone warnings about the bombs from the PIRA. The police accused the IRA of giving misleading warnings in an attempt to hit the security services with the second bomb while they were still dealing with the first. The blasts injured eleven people, which included seven civilians and four London police officers.[7]

The IRA continued using the "litter bin bomb" into 1993. The 1993 Harrods bombing in January 1993 caused injury to four civilians. Two months later the strategy would climax with horrible results. The Warrington bomb attacks of March 1993 killed two children, Jonhathan Ball (3) & Tim Parry (12), over 50 people were also injured in the attack.

• Staples Corner bombing
• Sussex Arms pub bombing
• Baltic Exchange bombing
• Camden Town bombing
• Carlton Club bombing
• 1993 Harrods bombing

• Peter Taylor, The Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin
• CAIN project
• Ed Moloney, A Secret History of the IRA 2002