Saturday, April 28, 2012

Police defuse bombs, find guns in Northern Ireland

Two bombs were defused in Northern Ireland, police said today, blaming dissident Irish nationalists opposed to a 1998 peace deal that largely ended violence in the British-controlled province.

One of the bombs was discovered under a parked car in Belfast where 80 people were moved from their homes for five hours overnight before the device was made safe by the army.

Army bomb disposal experts also defused a second explosive devise which was left in an abandoned vehicle in the town of Newry, not far from the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

A "significant" bomb was found near the main Dublin-to-Belfast motorway earlier this month that police said had the potential to kill.

Police investigating dissident activity also found guns and ammunition in the mainly Catholic Ardoyne area of Belfast.

The 1998 peace agreement called a halt to more than three decades of violence between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists opposed to British rule of Northern Ireland and predominantly Protestant unionists who wanted it to continue.

But dissidents, many of them belonging to splinter groups that have broken away from the IRA, fight on with mostly unsuccessful and sporadic gun and bomb attacks.