Annie's Bar Massacre

The Top of the Hill bar shooting, known locally as the Annie's Bar massacre, was a mass shooting that occurred in Belfast in 1972. It was part of the political and religious conflict known as the Troubles that lasted from 1967 to 1998. Five bar patrons, all men, were killed in the attack. It is considered an act of terrorism by the UK government.

Shooting

On December 20, 1972, the Catholic-owned Top of the Hill bar (now called Annie's Bar) was attacked by members of a group calling itself the "Ulster Freedom Fighters" (a division of the Ulster Defence Association). The bar was packed with civilians watching a football game on TV when two armed and masked men burst in and sprayed the room with bullets from a Sterling submachine gun. The attack was over in under a minute and left five people dead. The bar is believed to have been targeted because it was often visited by Catholics, the main target of pro-UK terrorists like the UFF. Among the five dead men, one, Charles Moore, was actually a Protestant.

As with most of the atrocities committed during the troubles, those responsible for the massacre were never caught. Many people regard the Annie's Bar massacre as a particularly heinous killing because it took place just five days before Christmas. It is believed that the attack was in response to the killing of a UDR man named George Hamilton by the Irish Republican Army earlier that day, but that was seen as poor justification for the killing of five innocent people. It was the largest and most deadly UFF/UDA attack until 1992.