A massive bomb left beneath the main road linking Belfast and Dublin could have caused “huge devastation,” police in Northern Ireland said on Saturday, as concerns mounted over the growing threat to peace.
Hundreds of motorists had unwittingly drove past a trash can packed with 225kg of explosives left in the back of a van in an underpass below the road.
Police said the bomb, left near the southeastern city of Newry, close to the border with the Republic of Ireland, was a sophisticated and substantial device that could have been destined for a town center.
Army bomb disposal experts carried out a series of controlled explosions on the homemade device. Detectives believe the van was abandoned because of the presence of a police checkpoint.
The discovery of the bomb comes days after Northern Ireland was rocked by the killing of Catholic police officer Ronan Kerr amid fears that dissident republicans opposed to the peace process are stepping up their activities.
The British province is gearing up for May 5 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, a keystone in the peace process, after the devolved, power-sharing administration survived a full, four-year term.
The Republic of Ireland is also preparing for a landmark visit by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II from May 17 to May 20.
It will be the first visit to the republic by a British monarch since independence in 1922, a hugely significant step showing how far relations have normalized between London and Dublin.
Local police commander Chief Superintendent Alasdair Robinson said the bomb could have caused “huge devastation and loss of life” and that the perpetrators had left poor warnings.
Cones blocking the underpass had been removed, meaning that hundreds of other motorists drove right past the bomb-laden vehicle, he added. The van was stolen in Ireland in January.
The bomb had been designed to cause “death and destruction,” said Brian Rea, acting chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which supervises the province’s police. “The public and political revulsion at the murder of Constable Kerr clearly shows that the people of Northern Ireland do not want any more devastation inflicted on our community and our police service.”
Board member Jonathan Bell said the bombers had planted “500 pounds [225kg] of hatred aimed at murder.”
“Had this device exploded, the consequences are almost too horrible to contemplate,” he said.
Gerry Adams, president of Northern Ireland’s mainstream republican party Sinn Fein, said their heartlands were “seething with anger” at “a small core of anti-peace groups.”
“Your achievement has been to unite us all in opposition to your actions. It is time to end these futile attacks on the peace process, they will not succeed,” he wrote on his blog.
Some compared the size of the bomb to that used in the 1998 Omagh attack, in which dissident republicans killed 29 people, including a pregnant woman, and wounded about 200 others.
Police were meanwhile continuing to question three men aged 40, 33 and 26 over Kerr’s murder.
Detectives investigating his death have also uncovered a massive haul of arms and explosives, described by police as the “one of the most significant in recent years.”
The policeman’s funeral on Wednesday produced cross--community condemnation of the attack.
The violence is being blamed on dissident republicans who want Northern Ireland to become part of the Irish Republic, but remain wedded to violent means.
Sporadic unrest continues in the province despite the 1998 peace accords that largely ended the Troubles, the three decades of sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics that left more than 3,000 dead.
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