Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents fired gunshots and detonated a car bomb outside a security base in a Northern Ireland border village, injuring three people, police said yesterday.
The attack outside the heavily fortified Newtownhamilton police station is the third in the British territory this year by splinter IRA groups. They oppose Northern Ireland’s peace process and the Catholic-Protestant government it forged.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said the bombers fired gunshots at the base — which was unoccupied at the time — as they abandoned the car bomb, then fled in another car.
Officers were still driving to the village when the bomb exploded an hour later, but local firefighters had already begun to evacuate people from nearby streets and houses. Police said the three injured civilians were not seriously hurt, while nearby properties — including homes, a pub and a community center — suffered broken windows.
On April 12 the dissidents detonated a car bomb outside the British MI5 spy agency offices near Belfast, while in January another car bomb exploded at the security gates of a courthouse in the border town of Newry. Nobody was injured in either of those attacks.
Dissidents also placed a dud car bomb outside the same Newtownhamilton base on April 13 that British Army experts dismantled.
Hours before the latest attack, police had issued a warning that IRA dissidents were trying to increase their attacks in the run-up to the May 6 British general election. Local Irish Catholic and British Protestant parties are vying for Northern Ireland’s 18 seats in the House of Commons in London.
The joint leaders of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government condemned the bombers and said the blast would not deter them from deepening their cooperation.
“This is an evil and cowardly attack by people who have nothing to offer but murder and mayhem,” said First Minister Peter Robinson, whose Democratic Unionist Party represents the Protestant majority. “I remain resolute in my determination to defend and protect the political process.”
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander, said that the dissidents had struck “in the middle of an election campaign which is about our future.”
“Whoever carried this out offer nothing but hardship, division and pain. We cannot allow them to define our future. They will not break the will of the community,” said McGuinness, deputy leader of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party.
However, local politicians also criticized the police for failing to staff the Newtownhamilton base at night and for responding too slowly to take part in evacuating the area.
Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday urged so-called middle powers to become a “poisonous shrimp” to carve out strategic economic leverage in a more turbulent global environment. Sunak drew from a metaphor by former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀): A big fish will eat a smaller fish, and the smaller fish will eat the shrimp. Lee made the point a year after the Asian nation’s independence in 1966 that the city-state needed to build up its defense mechanisms — like a shrimp that stings — so it would be left alone by predators. “He was thinking about what Singapore’s
POLL POSITION: Democrats criticized the timing of the raid, saying that the US justice department historically avoids public investigations within 60 days of an election Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic US Representative Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed focus to the frequent target of White House derision in the final weeks of her re-election bid. The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that would determine control of the US House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding US Department of Justice (DOJ) protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an
A Rhode Island pumpkin grower appears to have broken the world record for the heaviest pumpkin, with his giant squash topping the record by nearly 136kg. Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island, weighed his pumpkin on Saturday at a contest in New England and is waiting for the Guinness World Records to confirm he smashed the record, set about a week earlier by a grower in England. Wallace said he has been in contact with Guinness officials who say his record is on track to be verified. “It’s truly massive, it was a pleasure to grow,” Wallace said on Monday. Guinness World Records lists
BUILDUP: The report comes as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi boosts defense spending in the face of China’s military expansion and the North Korean threat French defence contractor Thales will establish a maintenance and operational support base in Japan in what is seen as the first such move by a foreign firm in the country, a report said yesterday. Thales chairman and CEO Patrice Caine told the Nikkei business daily that the base “will mark a milestone toward Thales’ long-term engagement in Japan.” It is believed to be the first time a foreign defense company has established a dedicated base in Japan for the maintenance and operation of Japanese defense equipment, the Nikkei said. It added that Thales might also expand its Japan-based business to
RSS