It was a period marked also by enormous bombings. Belfast was badly hit by two bombs in Bedford Street on 2 August. In September, the Northern Ireland Forensic Science Laboratories were devastated by a 2, 000lb IRA bomb which damaged 700 homes and injured several people. On 21 October, the main street of Bangor in Co. Down was blitzed, as was the heart of Coleraine on 13 November. And Belfast’s central shopping area was again attacked on 1 December. The first member of the Royal Irish Rangers (into which the UDR had been subsumed) to be killed by the Provisionals was shot on 20 October. No
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