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Crash Kills 29 IRA Foes

MULL OF KINTYRE, Scotland -- Leaders of Britain's intelligence war against IRA guerrillas were killed when 29 people died in a helicopter crash in thick fog on a rugged Scottish headland, police said Friday. The crash of the giant twin-rotor Chinook on Thursday was a devastating blow to security chiefs battling to outwit the Irish Republican Army in its 25-year-old campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland's top intelligence officer as well as officers from the MI5 counter-intelligence service were among those to die in a horrific fireball, security sources said. Prime Minister John Major ruled out sabotage as a likely cause of the crash, telling reporters: "It looks as if it was a straightforward accident in appalling weather."

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