Real IRA

An extremist Irish republican terrorist group which split away from the IRA in 1997. Based in the republican stronghold of Dundalk, County Louth, close to the border with Northern Ireland, its political mouthpiece has been the 32 County Sovereignty Committee. On 15 August 1998 it was responsible for the deadliest terrorist atrocity in Northern Ireland's history, when 28 innocent bystanders were killed by a car bomb detonated in the shopping centre of Omagh, County Tyrone. Following condemnation of the attack by Sinn Fein and revulsion within Dundalk, the Real IRA apologized for the deaths and claimed that the warnings given had not been misleading, as the media and police claimed. Soon afterwards, it announced a suspension to its military operations.