Qualla: 1996 Docklands Bombing

1996 Docklands Bombing: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinV at de.wikipedia, Public domain. At 5:30 on the evening of Friday 9 February 1996, an IRA spokesman phoned Irish broadcaster RTÉ and announced, with great reluctance, that the seventeen-month ceasefire would end at six o'clock. The newsroom didn't believe him. They held the story. At 6:01 PM, in a small newsagent's shop on Marsh Wall in the South Quay area of London's Docklands, two men were finishing the day's work. Inam Bashir, the 29-year-old shop owner, and his employee John Jeffries, 31, were near the front of the premises. Outside, a 3,000-pound truck bomb hidden in the back of an Iveco Ford Cargo flatbed was counting down to detonation. When it went off, Bashir and Jeffries were killed outright, blown through two walls and buried in rubble. More than a hundred others were injured. The Northern Ireland peace process, which had seemed within reach for seventeen months, came apart in the same instant.

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Image: MartinV at de.wikipedia | Public domain

1996 Docklands Bombing: The Seventeen Months

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinV at de.wikipedia, Public domain. In December 1993 the British and Irish governments had issued the Downing Street Declaration, which offered Sinn Féin a seat at all-party peace negotiations if the IRA called a ceasefire. The IRA called one on 31 August 1994. For seventeen months, the killing slowed in Northern I...

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Image: MartinV at de.wikipedia | Public domain

1996 Docklands Bombing: The Truck

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinV at de.wikipedia, Public domain. The device was built during the ceasefire. Plastic sacks of ammonium nitrate fertiliser mixed with sugar, around 3,000 pounds in total, were packed around metal scaffolding poles drilled with holes and stuffed with Semtex booster charges. The whole assembly went into the back of ...

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Image: MartinV at de.wikipedia | Public domain

1996 Docklands Bombing: Bashir and Jeffries

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinV at de.wikipedia, Public domain. Inam Bashir was 29 years old, the proprietor of a newsagent shop. John Jeffries, 31, worked for him. They were in the front of the shop when the bomb detonated 80 yards away. The blast wave shoved them through two interior walls; their bodies were recovered from beneath the rubbl...

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Image: MartinV at de.wikipedia | Public domain

1996 Docklands Bombing: Bombed to the Table

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinV at de.wikipedia, Public domain. On 28 February, less than three weeks after the bombing, John Major and the Irish Taoiseach John Bruton announced that all-party talks would resume in June. Major dropped his demand for prior IRA disarmament. The British press accused him of being 'bombed to the table.' American ...

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Image: MartinV at de.wikipedia | Public domain

1996 Docklands Bombing: South Quay Today

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mattbuck (category), CC BY-SA 3.0. Walk along Marsh Wall today and there is no obvious mark left by the bomb. The South Quay Plaza was repaired and rebuilt. A small commemorative plaque marks the event. The Docklands Light Railway station at South Quay was eventually relocated 200 metres east, partly to accommodat...

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Image: mattbuck (category) | CC BY-SA 3.0

1996 Docklands Bombing: From the Air

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MartinV at de.wikipedia, Public domain. The South Quay area lies on the Isle of Dogs, immediately south of Canary Wharf's tower cluster. The bombing site is at the southern edge of the wharf, by the South Dock. The Docklands Light Railway runs east-west across the area. London City Airport (EGLC) is three miles east-so...

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Image: MartinV at de.wikipedia | Public domain