been sitting directly above the bomb, and all were killed instantly. Reaction Although mainland Britain had seen several IRA attacks—successful or otherwise—within the previous year, the M62 coach bombing was the most severe attack upon the mainland to date. Press and public alike were incensed, with the BBC describing the bombing as "one of the IRA's worst mainland terror attacks" and national newspapers such as The Guardian describing the atrocity as an "IRA outrage on the British mainland". In Northern Ireland, the Ulster Defence Association launched a renewed wave of revenge attacks on Irish Catholics in response to the M62 coach bomb, promising their campaign of sectarian violence would continue unabated "until the IRA ceased [their] bombing in England". Within days of the bombings, loyalists had shot and killed three Catholic civilians and wounded a further eight, some critically. Politicians from all three major parties called for "swift justice" against the perpetrator or perpetrators and the IRA in general. Within twenty-four hours of the explosion, demands had been heard in the Parliament of the United Kingdom that Irish citizens entering Britain be required to carry passports and other forms of identification at all times. The Secretary of State for Defence, Ian Gilmour, confirmed on 5 February these existing laws were to be reviewed. IRA Army Council response In an interview shortly after the bombing, IRA Army Council member Dáithí Ó Conaill was challenged over the choice of target, the lack of the official IRA protocol of a given advance warning, and the resulting deaths of civilians, including children. Ó Conaill replied that the coach was selected as a legitimate target because IRA intelligence had indicated that the vehicle was commissioned to carry military personnel only. Investigation Although a police spokesman initially emphasised that investigators were keeping an "open mind" as to the cause of the explosion, in the days immediately following the bombing, suspicion quickly fell upon the IRA, which had extended its campaign to England the previous year and had recently begun efforts to force the British Government to transfer four IRA members serving life imprisonment in English jails and currently engaging in hunger strikes to prisons in Northern Ireland. The construction of the explosive device was typical of those used by the IRA. An analysis of fragments of the timing device recovered at the scene of the explosion revealed the device may have been set to detonate up