Droppin Well bombing

On the evening of 6 December 1982, a member of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) left a time bomb inside the Droppin Well disco in Ballykelly, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The venue was targeted because it was frequented by British Army soldiers stationed at the nearby Shackleton Barracks. According to a later account from someone involved, the INLA unit had carried out reconnaissance of the venue to assess whether enough soldiers were present to justify the risk of civilian casualties.

Around 150 people were inside the pub at the time. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) estimated the device contained 5 to 10 pounds (2.3 to 4.5 kg) of commercial Frangex explosives, small enough to fit into a handbag. It had been placed beside a support pillar, and when it exploded at approximately 23:15, the blast brought down the roof, crushing many of those killed and injured under fallen masonry. It took several hours to pull survivors from the rubble; the last survivor was freed at 04:00, and the last body was not recovered until 10:30 the following day.

In total, 17 people died — 11 soldiers and six civilians — and around 30 others were injured, some seriously. Five of the civilian victims were young women, three of whom (Alan Callaghan, Valerie McIntyre and Angela Maria Hoole) were teenagers. Angela Hoole had been celebrating her engagement to one of the soldiers who survived. Of the 11 soldiers killed, eight belonged to the 1st Battalion Cheshire Regiment, two to the Army Catering Corps, and one to the Light Infantry. Bob Stewart, then a company commander in the Cheshire Regiment, was present at the scene, lost six soldiers from his company, and assisted with the dead and injured.

Suspicion initially fell on the Provisional IRA, which denied involvement. By 8 December, the British Army attributed the attack to the INLA, reasoning that the IRA would have been more cautious about civilian casualties in a mixed community. The INLA subsequently issued a statement claiming responsibility, describing the civilians killed as "consorts," and stating that attacks of this nature had greater impact on British public opinion than the killing of individual soldiers. The bombing drew criticism from parties on both sides of the conflict due to the high civilian toll. The government of the Republic of Ireland banned the INLA shortly afterward. INLA leader Dominic McGlinchey stated in an interview that the disco's owner had been warned six times to stop serving British soldiers, a threat first issued publicly during an Easter Rising commemoration in Derry in April 1982.

Six days after the bombing, RUC officers shot and killed two unarmed INLA members, Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll, near a vehicle checkpoint in Armagh, stating they believed the men were transporting McGlinchey, who was not in the vehicle.

In June 1986, four INLA members — sisters Anna Moore and Helena Semple, Eamon Moore, and Patrick Shotter — received life sentences for the attack. Anna Moore's daughter, Jacqueline Moore, received a ten-year sentence for manslaughter after the court determined she had been coerced into involvement; she gave birth while in custody. All four convicted for life were from Derry.