The Warrenpoint ambush (also known as the Warrenpoint massacre by some media sources) was a guerrilla assault by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 27 August 1979. At 16:40 a 500 pounds (227 kg) fertiliser bomb hidden in a lorry loaded with strawbales, parked close to Narrow Water Castle, was detonated by remote control as an army convoy of a Land-Rover and two four-ton trucks drove past on the A2 road. The explosion caught the rear truck in the convoy killing six members of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment. After the first explosion the British soldiers, believing that they had come under attack from the IRA, began firing across the narrow maritime border with the Republic of Ireland, a distance of only 57 m (187 feet). An uninvolved civilian, Michael Hudson, an Englishman whose father was a coachman at Buckingham Palace was killed by British forces during the shooting, and his cousin Barry Hudson injured. According to RUC researchers, the soldiers may have mistaken the sound of ammunition cooking off from the Land-Rover destroyed in the original explosion for enemy fire from across the border. On hearing the first explosion a Royal Marine unit alerted the British Army of an explosion on the road and reinforcements from the Parachute Regiment were dispatched to the scene by road. At 17.12, thirty two minutes after the first explosion, a second device concealed in milk pails exploded against the gate lodge on the opposite side of the road, completely destroying it. The IRA had been studying how the British Army acted after a bombing and correctly assessed that the soldiers would set up an Incident Command Point (ICP) in the nearby gate house. The second explosion, caused by an 800 pounds (363 kg) fertiliser home-made bomb, killed twelve soldiers - ten from the Parachute Regiment died along with the two Queen's Own Highlanders soldiers. Mike Jackson, then a Major in the Parachute Regiment was at the scene soon after the second explosion and later described seeing pieces of human remains over the area and the face of his friend, Major Peter Fursman, still recognisable after it had been completely ripped away by the explosion from his head. Only one of Colonel Blair's epaulettes remained to identify him. [READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE]
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