Warrington bombings: Wikis

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Warrington bombings
Location	Warrington, England
Date	26 February 1993 04:00 (GMT) 20 March 1993 12:12 (GMT)
Target	a gasworks (First Attack) and Bridge Street, Warrington (Second Attack)
Attack type	Bombing
Death(s)	2
Injured	56^[1]
Perpetrator	Provisional IRA

The Warrington bombings took place in Warrington, England in 1993. The first attack, on a gasworks, created a huge fireball but no fatalities, but a police officer was shot and injured after stopping a van connected to the attacks.^[2] The second attack on Bridge Street killed two children and injured many other people. The attacks were conducted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).^[3]

1 First attack
2 Second attack
3 In popular culture
4 References
5 External links
6 See also

First attack

The first attack took place on 26 February 1993. Three devices exploded at the gasworks causing extensive damage.^[2] A police officer, PC Mark Toker, was shot and injured after stopping a van connected to the attacks, and a car was hijacked.^[2]^[4]

Second attack

At 11:58am on 20 March 1993, the telephone help charity The Samaritans received a coded message that a bomb was going to be detonated outside the Boots shop in Liverpool, fifteen miles away from Warrington. Merseyside Police investigated, and also warned the Cheshire Constabulary (who patrolled Warrington) of the threat, but it was too late to evacuate. At 12:12pm two bombs exploded, one outside Boots on Bridge Street and one outside the Argos catalogue store. It later turned out that the bombs had been placed inside cast-iron litter bins, causing large amounts of shrapnel.

Buses were organised to ferry people away from the scene and 20 paramedics and crews from 17 ambulances were sent to deal with the aftermath.

Eyewitnesses of the time said that "the first explosion drove panicking shoppers into the path of the next blast just seconds later."

There were two fatalities from the blast.

Three-year-old Johnathan Ball died at the scene, accompanied by his babysitter, who survived.

The second victim, 12-year-old Tim Parry, survived the impact with multiple injuries, but died on 25 March 1993 when doctors switched his life support machine off, having asked permission to do so from his family after a series of tests had found minimal brain activity.^[5]

54 other people were injured, four of them seriously. ^[2]

In popular culture

In 1994 Irish rock band The Cranberries released the song Zombie which was written as a protest to the bombings. The song went on to become one of their biggest hits.^[6]

References

^ Child killed in Warrington bomb attack, BBC On This Day, March 20, 1993
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Hansard - Terrorist Incidents
^ BBC:IRA campaign in England
^ Gas bombers may be freed, This is Chesire, May 18, 2000
^ Rage at I.R.A. Grows in England As Second Boy Dies From a Bomb, New York Times, March 26, 1993
^ Peter Buckley, Jonathan Buckley (2003). The Rough Guide to Rock. Rough Guides. ISBN 1843531054.

External links

Memorial service in 2008 for the victims
The Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Trust
Child killed in Warrington bomb attack — from the BBC News On This Day feature
The Damien Walsh Memorial Lecture by Roy Greenslade, 4 August 1998 "Some time later, political analysts Paul Bew and Gordon Gillespie, commented that the Warrington bombing created 'a wave of revulsion throughout the British Isles against terrorist killings.' What they meant, of course, was that media coverage of the deaths created a wave of revulsion."

Ireland
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