Aldwych bus bombing
1996 IRA bomb in London
The Aldwych bus bombing occurred on 18 February 1996 in Aldwych, central London, England. Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer Edward O'Brien was carrying a bomb on a bus when it detonated prematurely, killing him and injuring eight other people.
Background
The bus bombing occurred nine days after the Docklands bombing in east London, which marked the end of the IRA's ceasefire and the resumption of its armed campaign in England. On 16 February, an IRA bomb planted in a telephone box on Charing Cross Road, near Leicester Square tube station, was destroyed by a Metropolitan Police remote-controlled robot after a telephone warning.
Edward O'Brien
Edward O'Brien (18 September 1974 – 18 February 1996) was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer. He died in the bombing when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely. O'Brien grew up in Gorey, County Wexford, with his parents and two siblings. As a child he attended the local national and secondary schools. He was involved in several sports and was a member of St Enda's GAA Club where he played football and hurling. He also played for Gorey Rangers soccer club and was involved in boxing.
“Aldwych bus bombing” enters the record as 1996 IRA bomb in London. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Aldwych, bombing and bomb can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Aldwych bus bombing” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Aldwych, bombing and bomb provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q53231596. Authority coordinates are 51.512, -0.119. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Aldwych bus bombing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.