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.
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