Glenanne barracks bombing The Glenanne barracks bombing was a large truck bomb attack carried out by the Provisional IRA against a British Army ( Ulster Defence Regiment ) base at Glenanne , near Mountnorris , County Armagh . The driverless lorry was rolled down a hill at the rear of the barracks and crashed through the perimeter fence . The bombing took place on 31 May 1991 and left three soldiers killed and 14 people wounded , four of them civilians . Background . The bombing took place at a time when the Northern Ireland Office arranged multi - party talks ( known as the Brooke / Mayhew talks ) on the future of Northern Ireland . Sinn Féin members were not invited to attend because of their links with the IRA , which prevented them from being recognised as a ' constitutional ' party . The talks ended in failure soon after . Built in 1972 , the barracks housed two companies of the 2nd County Armagh battalion of the Ulster Defence Regiment ( UDR ) . Seen as an outpost , it sat on the dividing line between a Protestant area and a Catholic area . Although the military barracks itself had not been attacked by the IRA before , seven UDR soldiers from the base had already been killed during " The Troubles " . Author Kevin Toolis lists the destruction of Glenanne UDR barracks in County Armagh as part of the cycle of violence and tit - for - tat killings in neighbour County Tyrone . The IRA would later claim that the death of three of its men in the town of Coagh was an SAS retaliation for the Glenanne bombing . The bombing . At 11 : 30 PM , a driverless truck loaded with 2 , 500 lb ( 1 , 100 kg ) of a new type of home made explosive was rolled down a hill at the rear of the barracks and crashed through the perimeter fence . According to a witness , a UDR lance corporal who alerted the base , the truck was a Mercedes , and a Toyota Hiace van carrying at least two men acted as a support vehicle . The men were seen outside the parked van , masked and armed one with a handgun , the other with a submachine gun . Automatic fire was heard by other witnesses just before the main blast . A Reuters report claims that IRA members triggered the bomb by firing upon the driveless vehicle . It was later determined that the lorry had been stolen the day before in Kingscourt , in the Republic of Ireland . The blast left a crater 200 ft deep and threw debris and shrapnel as far as 300 yards . The explosion could be heard over 30 miles away , as far as Dundalk . This was the biggest bomb detonated by the IRA until then . Most of the UDR base was destroyed by the blast and the fire that followed . At first , a massive mortar attack was suspected . Livestock was killed and window glasses broken around nearby Mossfield housing as a result of the explosion . The cars parked outside the base were obliterated . Ceilings were brought down and the local primary school was also damaged . The barracks was usually manned by eight soldiers , but at the time there were 40 people in the complex , attending a social event . Three UDR soldiers – Lance corporal Robert Crozier age 46 , Private Sydney Hamilton age 44 and Private Paul Blakely age 30 , – were killed and ten were wounded . Two of them were caught by the explosion when they came out to investigate after a sentry gave the alarm ; a third died inside the base . Four civilians were also wounded . The Provisional IRA claimed responsibility two days later . The base was never rebuilt . It had outlived its operational usefulness and a decision had already been taken to close it down . However , the lack of interest in rebuilding the compound after the bombing would raise some controversy among unionists . A memorial stone was erected by the main entrance road with the names of the UDR soldiers killed over the years while serving in Glenanne .