but its first full-time Officer commanding (OC) was Ronnie Bunting whose father was Ulster Loyalist politician and British Army Major Ronald Bunting who was a follower of Ian Paisley. The Belfast INLA was the most active operational area of the INLA, and their capabilities were enhanced after obtaining a number of AK47s from the Middle East via a connection with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1978. which were first used by the Belfast INLA in August 1978, injuring a number of British soldiers. After Bunting was shot dead along with an IRSP member by the UDA in 1980, Gerard Steenson became OC of the INLA in Belfast. Steenson became the brigades Operations Officer in 1980 & was OC from 1981 - 1983. Around the same time period Jimmy Brown (Irish republican) became the brigades Intelligence officer (I/O), Thomas "Ta" Power, Hugh Torney Martin "Rook" O'Prey & future supergrass Harry Kirkpatrick was also highly active in the brigade during the early 1980s. This was the most active period in the INLA's history. Both Steenson & Brown would later go on to form the IPLO & attack their former comrades in the INLA. In September 1982 an INLA unit detonated a bomb in Divis Flats aimed at killing British soldiers but instead killed two young local boys aged 14 & 12 and a British soldier. This bombing prompted an angry response from residents of the Divis Flats, and about 200 women held a protest march at the IRSP's offices on the Falls Road. Eleven days after the Divis Flats bombing an INLA unit carried out another bomb attack against the British Army in west Belfast, this time killing a British soldier with a booby-trapped bomb attached to a security gate. After this attack the INLA warned that it would increase its bombing attacks on British security forces. Steenson was arrested and convicted along with several other members of the INLA in Belfast during the Supergrass trials of the 1980s. Tom McCartan a close friend of then INLA Chief of Staff Dominic McGlinchey (who had been arrested by Gardaí in the Republic following a lengthy and widely publicised manhunt) became OC of the Belfast INLA. It was during this period while McCartan was OC that the Belfast INLA moved into extortion and racketeering, damaging what popular support they had in the city. On 15 June 1984 Paul "Bonanza" McCann, one of the