being moved, the SAS took up its positions. Undercover Army 14 Intelligence Company soldiers drove around the backroads into Loughgall surveilling the unit. Ambush The IRA unit arrived in Loughgall from the north-east shortly after 19:00, when the station was scheduled to close for the night. They were armed and wearing bulletproof vests, boilersuits, gloves and balaclavas. The digger drove past the police station, turned around and drove back again with the Toyota van carrying the main IRA assault party doing the same. Not seeing any activity in the station in their two slow passes of it, members of the IRA unit felt that something was amiss, and debated whether to continue, but decided to go ahead with the attack. Tony Gormley and Gerard O'Callaghan got out of the van and joined Declan Arthurs on the digger, according to journalist Peter Taylor, "literally riding shotgun", with weapons in one hand and a lighter in the other. At about 7:15 Arthurs drove the digger towards the station. In the front bucket was of semtex inside an oil drum, partially hidden by rubble and wired to two 40-second fuses. The other five members of the unit followed in the van with Eugene Kelly driving, unit commander Patrick Kelly in the passenger seat, whilst in the rear were Lynagh, Pádraig McKearney, and Seamus Donnelly. The digger crashed through the light security fence and the fuses were lit. The van stopped a short distance ahead and, according to the British security forces, three of the team jumped out and fired on the building with automatic weapons. Author Raymond Murray disputes this. According to Taylor, and co-corroborated by an ECHR judgement, Patrick Kelly jumped from the passenger seat and, followed by others, immediately opened fire on the building, either to encourage the rest to resolve the dispute about going ahead with the attack, or possibly because this was the way previous attacks had begun. At the same time, the bomb detonated, the blast destroying the digger and badly damaging the building. Within seconds the SAS opened fire on the IRA attackers from the station and from hidden positions outside with M16 and H&K G3 rifles and two L7A2 general-purpose machine guns. There were 600 spent British cartridge cases recovered from the scene, with approximately 125 bullet holes in the bodywork of the van, while 78 spent cartridge cases were recovered that were fired from IRA