Miami Showband killings

Common card · No. 224602

Five people, including three members of The Miami Showband, were killed by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, on 31 July 1975 on the A1 road at Buskhill in County Down, Northern Ireland. The Miami Showband, one of Ireland's most popular cabaret bands, was travelling home to Dublin late at night after a performance in Banbridge. Halfway to Newry, their minibus was stopped at what appeared to be a military checkpoint where gunmen in British Army uniforms ordered them to line up by the roadside. At least four of the gunmen were soldiers from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), and all were members of the UVF. Two of the gunmen, both soldiers, died when a time bomb they were hiding on the minibus exploded prematurely. The other gunmen then started shooting the dazed band members, killing three and wounding two. It has been suggested that the bomb was meant to explode en route, so that the victim band members would appear to be Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb smugglers...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Bigar, CC BY-SA 4.0