In general IRA practice was to call ahead to announce their bombings to the target rather than do bombings unannounced. Which was a method to try and minimize civilian casualties, and in general most of the deadliest bombings of the troubles resulted from various kinds of failures of those warnings. The single deadliest bombing of the troubles, the Omagh Bombing, was that deadly in large part because of mistakes on the part of the bombers about where exactly the bomb was placed that led to the police moving crowds towards the bomb rather than away.

This would also depend on the organization carrying out the bombing and as the IRA splintered things obviously became more chaotic and unorganized.

In general the perspective would in this framing be one of collateral damage. Although obviously, collateral damage everyone knew to expect so entirely intentional collateral damage.

Edit: I should say that most of these warnings were also on fairly short notice as well. Which is partially why evacuations were often insufficient to prevent people from being harmed.