On 28 February 1985 in Newry , nine RUC officers ( seven Protestants and two Catholics ) , were killed in a mortar attack on the police station in Corry Square . It was planned by the IRA 's South Armagh Brigade and an IRA unit in Newry . Nine shells were fired from a mark 10 mortar which was bolted onto the back of a hijacked Ford van in Crossmaglen . Eight shells overshot the station ; the ninth hit a Portakabin which was being used as a canteen . On 8 November 1987 , in Enniskillen , County Fermanagh , a Provisional IRA time bomb exploded during a Remembrance Sunday ceremony for UK Commonwealth war casualties . The bomb went off by a cenotaph which was at the heart of the parade . Eleven people ( ten civilians , including a pregnant woman , and one serving member of the RUC ) were killed and 63 were injured . Former school headmaster Ronnie Hill was seriously injured in the bombing and slipped into a coma two days later , remaining in this condition for more than a decade before his death in December 2000 . The IRA eventually apologised for what it claimed had been a mistake and that its target had been the British soldiers parading to the memorial . The unit that carried out the bombing was disbanded . Loyalist paramilitaries responded to the bombing with revenge attacks on Catholics , mostly civilians . Another bomb had been planted at nearby Tullyhommon at a parallel Remembrance Day commemoration but failed to detonate
a mortar attack
1985 Newry mortar attack
The Troubles