| abstract | - From 1985 onwards, the IRA in East Tyrone had been the forefront of a wide IRA campaign against British military facilities. In 1987, an East Tyrone IRA unit was ambushed and eight of its members killed by the SAS while bombing an RUC base at Loughgall, County Armagh. This was the IRA's greatest loss of life in a single incident during the Troubles. Despite these losses, the IRA campaign continued unabated; 33 British bases were destroyed and nearly 100 damaged during the next five years. The SAS ambush had no noticeable long-term effect on the level of IRA activity in East Tyrone. In the two years before the Loughgall ambush the IRA killed seven people in East Tyrone and North Armagh, and eleven in the two years following the ambush. Another three IRA members—Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin—had been ambushed and killed by the SAS as they tried to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldier near Carrickmore, County Tyrone. British intelligence identified them as the perpetrators of the Ballygawley bus bombing, which killed eight British soldiers. After that bombing, all troops on leave or returning from leave were ferried in and out of East Tyrone by helicopter. Another high-profile attack of the East Tyrone Brigade was carried out on 11 January 1990 near Augher, where a Gazelle helicopter was shot down. On 3 June 1991, three IRA men, Lawrence McNally, Michael Ryan and Tony Doris, died in another SAS ambush at Coagh, where their car was riddled with gunfire. Michael Ryan was the same man who according to Ed Moloney had led the mixed flying column which assaulted a British Army checkpoint at Derryard under direct orders of top IRA Army Council member 'Slab' Murphy two years before. Moloney, who wrote A Secret History of the IRA, and author Brendan O'Brien said that the IRA East Tyrone Brigade lost 53 members during the Troubles—the highest of any "Brigade area". Of these, 28 were killed between 1987 and 1992.
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