Word: belfasts
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...shadow that fell across O'Casey's Dublin during the 1920s has become the specter that terrorizes contemporary Ulster. Sections of Londonderry and Belfast are as desolated as London during the blitz, and the scarred faces of empty, bombed-out buildings are pockmarked from gunfire. Streets are blockaded by ganglia-like stretches of barbed wire and by "antiterrorist ramps"?thick bands of bitumen or concrete nine inches high that force traffic to slow to a crawl. On the red brick walls surrounding vacant lots, the children of Belfast?perhaps the most tragic victims of the war?have scrawled afresh...
...last week of 1971 was typical of life in the dour, grimy Victorian cities of the North that are a battleground in the conflict between the British army and the outlawed terrorist Irish Republican Army. There were bombings in Belfast, Londonderry, Enniskillen and the village of Rostrevor. where the I.R.A. destroyed the country house of Ivan Neill, Speaker of the Ulster House of Commons. (Neill and his wife were away...
...violence against "soft targets"-meaning stores, pubs and the like-has been on the increase. Christmas week turned out to be merely another grim episode in the I.R.A.'s attempt to force unity of the two Irelands through guerrilla warfare. On Monday morning alone, a dozen explosions ripped Belfast. Among the damaged targets were the city's best hotel (the Conway), a clothing factory, a furniture store, a supermarket, an antique shop, an insurance office, a railway station and a television-rental company. Next day bombs blasted two pubs, a laundry and a bicycle store...
...addition, four I.R.A. terrorists were killed: three of them were blown to pieces when a bomb they were transporting exploded in their car near the town of Magherafelt, northwest of Belfast...
Despite all the attacks, the I.R.A. could not live up to its threat to bring Belfast to a standstill by Christmas. And these days, Ulster is thankful for such small mercies...