The IRA's Belfast Brigade launched an operation to assassinate the UDA's top commanders, whom it believed were at the meeting. The plan allegedly was for two IRA members to enter the shop with a time bomb, force out the customers at gunpoint and flee before it exploded; killing those at the meeting. As they believed the meeting was being held in the room above the shop, the bomb was designed to send the blast upwards. IRA members maintained that they would have warned the customers as the bomb was primed. It had an eleven-second fuse, and the IRA stated that this would have allowed just enough time to clear the downstairs shop but not enough for those upstairs to escape.