Two Killed in Belfast Blast; IRA Says It Was a Mistake

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — An Irish Republican Army bomb exploded Wednesday in an apartment booby trap set for British soldiers, killing an elderly neighbor and a woman. The IRA apologized for the trap that went “tragically wrong.”

Also on Wednesday, police said three men killed in a British army ambush Tuesday were IRA terrorists armed and dressed for action. The attack was seen as the start of a British crackdown on the outlawed IRA.

In West Germany, police captured two armed suspected IRA guerrillas heading toward a British army barracks.

The apartment bomb in Londonderry, about 60 miles northwest of Belfast, was triggered by an elderly man who climbed through a window, worried that the young man living there had not been seen for several days, police said.

The blast demolished the apartment, killing the elderly man and a woman standing outside and injuring another man, police said.

An IRA statement and the police account indicated the IRA abducted the apartment’s occupants several days ago and planted the booby trap, hoping an army search party would enter the apartment and trigger the explosives.

The IRA’s Londonderry unit apologized in a statement circulated to the news media.

“Although the operation was carefully planned, it went tragically wrong,” the statement said.

Since November, the IRA has killed 20 civilians unintentionally.

Meanwhile, the British news media speculated that the Special Air Services, the country’s anti-terrorist squad, had ambushed the three IRA gunmen killed Tuesday. The three were attacked while on a country road near Drumnakilly, about 8 miles from the spot where an IRA bomb on Aug. 20 killed eight British soldiers in a bus.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary said Brian Mullen and brothers Gerard and Martin Harte were IRA operatives.

In Dublin, Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey called for a review of the incident. And Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party, said Britain would have to say whether troops made any attempt to arrest them.