Newly released files have revealed the scale of violence that erupted in the Belfast in the early 1920s. The nominal rolls of the 3rd Northern Division (1st Belfast Brigade) contains a handwritten list of 455 people killed in Belfast in that period. Attacks by the IRA on the security forces during the War of Independence were frequently met with vicious reprisals from loyalists who targeted Catholic communities in Belfast. That night an RIC armoured police van entered the Falls Road area and was ambushed on Raglan Street by an IRA unit defending Catholic areas. McCorley said that on the day afterwards: “I went up to investigate and found the whole street a mass of brain matter and blood.”On July 10th, 1921, 16 people were killed in Belfast in what was another Bloody Sunday in the North.

Source: The Irish Times October 14, 2019 01:07 UTC