Falls Curfew The Falls Curfew ( also called the Battle of the Falls or the Rape of the Lower Falls ) was a British Army operation during 3 – 5 July 1970 in the Falls district of Belfast , Northern Ireland . The operation began as a search for weapons in the staunchly Irish nationalist district . As the search ended , local youths attacked the British soldiers with stones and petrol bombs and the soldiers responded with CS gas . This quickly developed into gun battles between British soldiers and the Official Irish Republican Army . Four hours after the violence began , the British commander sealed - off the area and imposed a curfew , which would last 36 hours . During that time , the British Army carried out house - to - house searches for weapons , occasionally coming under attack from the Official IRA . The searches involved much destruction and a large amount of CS gas was fired into the area . On 5 July , the curfew was brought to an end when 3 , 000 women and children from Andersonstown marched into the curfew zone with food and groceries for the locals . During the operation , four civilians were killed by the British Army , at least 75 people were wounded ( including 15 soldiers ) and 337 people were arrested . A large number of weapons and ammunition was also captured . The Falls Curfew deeply alienated Belfast ' s Irish nationalist and Catholic population from the British Army and boosted support for the IRA . Background . A week before the Falls Curfew , on Saturday 27 June 1970 , Belfast experienced severe rioting after an Orange Order parade in the north of the city . During that evening , republicans claim that groups of loyalist rioters began to make incursions into the Catholic and Irish nationalist Short Strand enclave of east Belfast . Loyalists claim that the violence was begun by the republicans ; allegeding that Orangemen and supporters came under attack on Newtownards Road when returning from a parade . Members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army took up sniping positions in the grounds of St Matthew ’ s Catholic Church and engaged in a prolonged gun battle with loyalist gunmen . Across Belfast seven people were killed , of whom five were Protestants and one was a Roman Catholic shot by the IRA . Meanwhile , the Official Irish Republican Army arranged for a large number of weapons to be brought into the mainly nationalist and Catholic Lower Falls area for distribution . The area was a stronghold of the Official IRA . The operation . Initial weapons search . In response to the violence , the following weekend the British government sent troops from the Black Watch and Life Guards regiments into the Lower Falls area to recover paramilitary weapons . The search began at about 3pm on Friday 3 July , under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Ian Freeland . An informer had tipped them off that they would find an arms dump belonging to the Official IRA in a house on Balkan Street . A column of five or six armored vehicles arrived at the house and sealed - off the street . The search uncovered 19 weapons . Gun battles and rioting . As the armored vehicles left the area , a small crowd of youths on Raglan Street pelted them with stones . The troops replied by launching CS gas at the crowd . The youths continued to throw stones and the soldiers responded with more CS gas . The stone - throwing escalated into a full - scale riot and a number of streets were hastily barricaded to prevent the British soldiers from entering . Jim Sullivan , the local Official IRA commander , feared that the troops would launch a bigger raid and instructed his men to move weapons out of the area . At about 6pm , Provisional IRA members attacked the troops with improvised hand grenade s . A number of soldiers suffered leg injuries . As more troops were sent into the area , " the Officials realized that they would have to fight " , and Sullivan ordered his men to confront the troops . An Official IRA source later said : " The way we looked at it , we were not going to put up our hands and let them take the weaponry . We didn ' t want the confrontation , but we couldn ' t surrender " . According to one source , 60 – 70 Official IRA volunteers were involved . According to another , 80 – 90 were involved . Each was armed with a rifle and at least one revolver . They exchanged fire with the troops , who fired over 1 , 500 rounds in the incident . Hundreds of local youths also pelted the troops with stones and petrol bombs . Journalist Simon Winchester later wrote : To anyone who experienced the battle , it was perfectly obvious that hundreds and hundreds of bullets were being fired by both sides – and yet the Army had the gall , when asked by reporters later in the weekend , to say that its soldiers fired only 15 shots in sum . The Army also continued firing CS gas . Catapults were used to launch heavy CS gas canisters into the area and some went through the roofs of a few houses . According to the Central Citizens ' Defence Committee , even streets where there had been no disorder " received salvo after salvo " . The soldiers fired 1 , 600 canisters of CS gas during the operation , which was considered to be excessive in such a small area . Journalist Peter Taylor describes the effect of the CS gas on the densely populated area : The clouds of choking and suffocating gas drifted up the narrow alleyways and back streets of the warren that is the Lower Falls . The gas got everywhere , in through windows , under doors and into the residents ' eyes , noses , throats and lungs . A soldier later interviewed by Taylor recalled : " The place was still saturated with CS gas . Children were coughing , I remember . I ' m talking now about the toddlers , kids of three , four , five . It affected everyone but children especially " . There were allegations that some soldiers fired CS gas canisters through the windows of houses while residents were still inside . Hundreds of women and children , along with the sick and elderly , began evacuating the area . The curfew . At 10pm on Friday 3 July , four hours after the violence began , Freeland ordered that the area be put under an indefinite curfew and that anyone on the streets be arrested . British soldiers announced the curfew through loudspeakers on the ground and in helicopters . The boundaries of the official curfew zone were the Falls Road in the west and north , Albert Street and Cullingtree Road in the east , and Grosvenor Road in the south . However , during the curfew the zone was extended in the southwest as far as Dunmore Street . There were about 3 , 000 homes inside the curfew zone . After the curfew began , up to 3 , 000 soldiers began moving into the area supported by armoured vehicles and helicopters . They also began sealing - off the curfew zone with barbed wire . Shooting and rioting continued for a number of hours after the curfew began . Directly after the curfew was imposed , three soldiers were shot and wounded by Official IRA volunteers in Omar Street . The Provisional IRA pulled out , allegedly because it believed the clash would end badly and it would lose the few weapons it had . The last shots were fired at dawn on Saturday 4 July . After sealing off the curfew zone , the Army began a house - to - house search for weapons under the cover of CS gas . At least 1 , 000 houses were searched . Any journalists who remained inside the curfew zone were arrested by the Army . It is claimed that , because the media was unable to watch their activities , the soldiers behaved " with reckless abandon " . Hundreds of houses were forcibly searched for weapons . There were scores of complaints of soldiers hitting , threatening , insulting and humiliating residents . Pubs and businesses were also searched and it is claimed that several of them were looted by the soldiers . According to Mallie and Bishop ' s account : " The soldiers behaved with a new harshness . . . axeing down doors , ripping up floorboards , disembowelling chairs , sofas , beds , and smashing the garish plaster statues of the Madonna [ . . . ] which adorned the tiny front parlours " . At a Northern Ireland Cabinet meeting on 7 July , it was said that " little structural damage had been reported , apart from the pulling up of floorboards " . The ministers concluded that there was a " smear campaign " being mounted against the British Army . The British Minister of State for defence , Lord Balniel , defended the actions of the soldiers , stating : " I am deeply impressed by the impartial way they are carrying out an extremely difficult task " . At 5pm on Saturday , the Army announced by loudspeaker that people could leave their homes for two hours to get vital supplies . However , nobody was allowed to leave or enter the curfew zone . During this time , the local Member of Parliament , Paddy Devlin , was arrested by the Army while out talking to his constituents . End of the curfew . Although the area remained sealed - off , by midday on Sunday 5 July there was a perception among locals that the operation had been abandoned . According to Hanley and Millar , " the British knew that most of the ' more attractive ' armaments had been spirited away ' before the cordon was fully effective ' " . The curfew was broken on Sunday , when 3 , 000 women and children from the nationalist Andersonstown area marched to the British lines with food and other groceries for the people there . The unprepared soldiers tried to hold back the crowd at first , but eventually allowed it to pass through . By the time the search was over , the troops had captured about 100 firearms , 100 home made grenades , 250 pounds of explosives and 21 , 000 rounds of ammunition . Among the firearms were 52 pistols , 35 rifles , 6 machine guns and 14 shotguns . Almost all of this material belonged to the Official IRA . It was later reported that while the lower Falls was under curfew and the streets emptied of people , the Army had driven two Unionist ministers , John Brooke and William Long , through the area in armoured vehicles . This enraged nationalists in Northern Ireland , who perceived the gesture as a symbol of unionist triumphalism over an area cowed by British military force . Casualties . The British Army killed four civilians during the operation : Another 60 civilians suffered gunshot wounds , as did 15 soldiers , 3 more of whom were wounded by stones or petrol bombs . A total of 337 people , including Official IRA leader Billy McMillen were also arrested . Results . The Falls Curfew had two major results . The first was that it deeply alienated Belfast ' s Irish nationalist and Catholic population from the Army . Historian Richard English suggests that the Falls Curfew was " arguably decisive in terms of worsening the relationship between the British Army and the Catholic working class " . Previously , many of them had seen the Army as a neutral force in the city to keep order between Catholics and Protestants . However , the events of the Falls Curfew gave credence to the Irish republican argument that the British Army was a hostile colonial army of occupation . According to Sinn Féin ' s Gerry Adams , " Thousands of people who had never been republicans now gave their active support to the IRA ; others , who had never had any time for physical force now regarded it as a practical necessity " . The second main result was a deepening of the enmity between the two factions of the Irish Republican Army , the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA , who had parted ways in December 1969 . The Officials blamed the Provisionals for starting the confrontation with troops and then leaving them to fight alone against overwhelming odds , resulting in the loss of much of their weaponry . Over the following year , the two factions carried out many shootings and beatings of each other ' s members . A truce was eventually agreed between them to prevent further bloodshed after the Officials assassinated a young Provisional named Charlie Hughes . Hughes was the commander of the Provisional ' s unit in the lower Falls and had taken part in some of the fighting during the Falls Curfew .