It is eighteen years since an IRA bomb, at 3,300lbs, the second largest ever on the UK mainland, exploded in the centre of Manchester.
Now sixty nine previously unseen photographs have been published by the Greater Manchester Fire Service, having been found recently in their archives.
The bomb, which remarkably killed nobody but injured over two hundred, would accelerate the process of redeveloping the centre of the city.
It exploded on a Saturday morning as a remote control device was examining a suspect vehicle on Corporation after a warning had been phoned to the broadcaster Granada.Shoppers had been evacuated earlier following the warning nearly an hour and twenty minutes earlier but even so the initial cordon was not enough. After the blast, glass was “raining” on the fleeing and screaming civilians as far as half a mile around the bomb’s epicentre.
Nobody was ever prosecuted for the attack. The white and orange Ford Cargo truck containing the device had been seen in the Peterborough area the previous afternoon, having been sold to a dealer in Wisbech, Cambs, two months previously.
Greater Manchester Police and the Anti Terrorist Squad launched a massive investigation called Operation Cannon to find the bombers but despite a million pound reward, nobody has ever been arrested for the bombing, although it has been rumoured that their identities have been known.
