An SAS soldier has spoken for the first time about how he and his unit "lured" three IRA men to their deaths in a 1988 ambush.
The soldier, believed to be the first of the elite British army unit to speak publicly about an operation in Northern Ireland, recalls the gun battle in Co Tyrone as being like a scene from "one of the old gangster movies".
He describes three IRA members as the "bad boys" who got "the shock of their life".
The interview will be broadcast in a Channel 4 television documentary on Monday.
The SAS man's identity is kept secret in the film and his words are voiced by an actor as he details how his troop mounted the clandestine operation in August 1988.
IRA members Martin Harte (23), above, his brother Gerard (29) and brother-in-law Brian Mullin (26) were shot dead at Cloughfin in Drumnakilly.
The SAS man says the ambush was planned after an IRA 'active service unit' was spotted tailing a coal man who was also a part-time UDR soldier.
"(The IRA) were going to kill him but we didn't know when and we didn't know where, so we came up with this plan, saying 'right, he's driving round and about when he gets a puncture or something like that and he's got to stop'," the soldier says in the documentary SAS – The Real Story.
"So it's like a lure in a way, to try to get them into the job. So we selected a spot, covered it with an OP (observation post), a reactive OP, which basically means we're there to watch but if it turns bad we can react to it."
One of the unit took the place of the coal man and pretended to work on the vehicle. "And lo and behold, the bad boys turn up. I mean, they're in a vehicle. You can't touch them. You can't stop them. And they drive past three or four times, past the coal lorry where the guy was sort of fixing his puncture," the soldier says.
"He actually had the wheel off and they didn't do anything.
"Next minute they're driving up the road towards where we are. They're about 200 yards away, the old shots start coming and there's quite a few rounds bouncing round about you now.
"The guy who was firing was actually hanging out the back window of the car like one of the old gangster movies.
"We just opened fire. There was about eight of us there, I suppose. They got the shock of their life, you know.
"So within seconds it was over and done with and the three in the cargot killed."
