Along the back roads of County Tyrone in Northern Ireland, black flags nailed to telephone poles fluttered desultorily in an autumn mist. In Dungannon an Irish tricolor flew at half-staff, while in Carrickmore the sidewalk curbs were painted orange, white and green. Thus last week did supporters of the tiny but lethal Irish Republican Army mourn the loss of three ranking "volunteers" -- two of them brothers -- who had been shot to death by British commandos in an ambush near Carrickmore.
After a series of successful attacks against British forces, the outlawed I.R.A. has suffered a string of mishaps and setbacks. In the Catholic Ardoyne district of Belfast, police last week confiscated 200 pounds of explosives and predicted that the I.R.A. was planning a "horrific remainder to 1988." That followed the arrests in Waldfeucht, West Germany, of two I.R.A. suspects by a border guard who discovered weapons in their car during a random search. Waldfeucht is only 16 miles from Rheindalen, headquarters for the 67,000 British troops stationed in the Federal Republic.
The most damaging reverse came in Derry, where a middle-aged man and woman were blown up by an I.R.A. booby-trap bomb intended for a British army patrol. The accident prompted yet another embarrassed apology by the terrorists. They realize such mistakes cost them support, even among sympathizers in Ulster's 500,000-member Catholic community, and stiffen the determination of the Protestant majority, 1 million strong, to continue keeping a lid on the minority.
The government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was meanwhile coping with a potential embarrassment of its own, in the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Last week a coroner's inquest opened into the March 6 killing of another three-member I.R.A. team by a squad from the British army's antiterrorist Special Air Services regiment. The inquest is expected to last a month and hear testimony from more than 70 witnesses, including seven SAS members who were involved in the killings. The seven, identified only as Soldiers A through G, will testify from behind a curtain in the witness box, within sight of only the coroner, lawyers and an eleven-member jury.
At the heart of the investigation are allegations that Britain has been conducting a shoot-to-kill policy against the I.R.A. Thatcher denies the charge, insisting that the security forces operate within the law and follow the same rules of engagement that prevailed during the Falklands war. "You obviously set certain criteria and let the people operate within them," she said.
Nonetheless, witnesses in Gibraltar have said the three victims -- Mairead Farrell, 31; Daniel McCann, 30; and Sean Savage, 23 -- were unarmed, on foot and shot without warning by plainclothes gunmen, who immediately disappeared in police cars after the shootings. The accounts received some unexpected support last week from Dr. Alan Watson, a University of Glasgow pathologist who testified for the British government. He told the hearing that his work had been impeded by British officials, and described the shootings as a "frenzied attack."