Thread by @SEFFLisnaskea

SEFF remembers 10 innocents murdered in The Kingsmills massacre, 46 yrs ago, 5/1/76 by PIRA, nr Whitecross in S Armagh.
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Gunmen stopped a minibus carrying 11 Protestant workmen, lined them up alongside it & shot them. Only 1 victim survived (Alan Black), despite having been ...

..shot 18 times.

The bus had been stopped by a man in combat uniform standing on the road flashing a torch. The workers assumed it was the Regular Army.
As the bus stopped, 11 gunmen in combat uniform & with blackened faces emerged from the hedges. A man "with a pronounced ...

.. English accent" began talking.
He ordered the workers to get out of the bus & to line up facing it with their hands on the roof. He then asked "Who is the Catholic?".
The only RC was Richard Hughes. His workmates, now fearing that the gunmen were loyalists who had come to ...

.. kill him, tried to stop him from identifying himself.
However, when Richard stepped forward the gunman told him to "Get down the road & don't look back".
The lead gunman then said "Right", & the others immediately opened fire on the workers, shooting at very close range ...

..with automatic rifles.
136 rounds were fired in less than a min. The men were shot at waist-height & fell to the ground; some fell on top of each other, either dead or wounded.
When the initial burst of gunfire stopped, the gunmen re-loaded their weapons.
The order was ...

.. given to "Finish them off", & another burst of gunfire was fired into the heaped bodies of the workmen. A gunmen also walked amongst the dying & shot them each in the head with a pistol. 10 died at the scene:

A group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force ..

.. claimed responsibility. It said it was retaliation for a string of attacks on RCs in the area by Loyalists, particularly the killing of 6 the night before.
The massacre was the climax of a string of tit-for-tat killings in the area during the mid-1970s, & 1 of the deadliest ..

.. mass shootings of ‘The Troubles.’

A 2011 HET report found that members of the PIRA carried out the attack, despite PIRA being on ceasefire. The men were targeted because they were Protestants & that it had been planned. The weapons used were linked to 110 other attacks. ...

Victims
John Bryans 46
Robert Chambers 19
Reginald Chapman 25
Walter Chapman 23
Robert Freeburn 50
Joseph Lemmon 46
John McConville 20
James McWhirter 58
Robert Walker 46
Kenneth Worton 24.
Alan Black (then 32) shot 18 times, survived. One bullet grazed his head. "I didn't..

..even flinch because I knew if I moved there would be another one".
After carrying out the shooting, the gunmen were said to have calmly walked away.
Shortly after, a married couple came upon the scene & began praying beside the victims. They found Alan lying in a ditch. ...

..Richard Hughes, (RC worker) had managed to stop a car & was driven to Bessbrook RUC station, to raise the alarm.
Johnston Chapman, uncle of victims Reginald & Walter Chapman, said the dead were "just lying there like dogs, blood everywhere".

To date the Kingsmills families ..

..have been denied justice & accountability for the events of that fateful day.
The Kingsmills attack was amongst the most barbaric sectarian & ethnic motivated crimes to have taken place in ‘The Troubles’.
We also remember the 6 lives stolen away by UVF the previous day; the ...

..Reavey & O'Dowd brothers (each family having 3 brothers murdered) All 3 acts of terrorism were motivated by ethnic & sectarian hatred & were totally wrong & unjustifiable.
Our thoughts are with the families of those murdered at Kingsmills & survivor Alan Black today & every day