IRA suspected after British army defuses van bomb

British army experts defused a 275-kilogram van bomb Saturday on the Northern Ireland border, the largest such bomb in more than a year linked to Irish Republican Army die-hards.   

The bomb was defused two days after a passing motorist told police about the abandoned van on a border road near the predominantly Catholic town of Newry, a hub for IRA activity in Ulster. Fearful of an IRA ambush, police and soldiers took more than a day to search the surrounding area before moving in.   

Chief Supt. Alasdair Robinson, Newry's police commander, called the bomb "a very significant device. If this had exploded, it would have caused devastation."   

Robinson said the bomb — two explosives-filled barrels attached to a detonator and power-timer unit — was fully assembled, viable and big enough to cause major damage to a town centre. He said anybody within 50 metres of the bomb would probably have been killed had it been detonated.   

He said the attackers might have abandoned the bomb short of their intended target after spotting a police patrol ahead, as has happened several times previously when IRA dissidents tried to drive car bombs into town centres.   

But politicians noted that IRA dissidents made no telephone warnings. The anti-British militants usually issue warnings when leaving bombs in civilian areas, but not when they are trying to draw police into range of a bomb or a second hidden device nearby.   

"Clearly this was an attempt to lure a police patrol into that area, with potentially lethal consequences," said Danny Kennedy, a Protestant member of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government who lives near Newry.   

'Clearly this was an attempt to lure a police patrol into that area, with potentially lethal consequences' — Danny Kennedy, a Protestant member of Northern Ireland's government

Several small IRA splinter groups continue to mount attacks in Northern Ireland in hope of undermining key accomplishments of its peace process, including a stable Catholic-Protestant government and an increasingly integrated police force. The major IRA faction, the Provisional IRA, renounced violence and disarmed in 2005, and its allied Sinn Fein party in 2007 accepted the legal authority of the police.   

Since then the IRA dissidents have greatly increased attacks on police officers, usually when they are off duty and more vulnerable. The threat means that officers still cannot live safely in predominantly Irish Catholic districts because the IRA factions have their roots there.   

Roadside ambushes

Police say they also must exercise caution when responding to suspected bombs or other reported crimes near Northern Ireland's meandering 500-kilometre border with the Republic of Ireland, where dissidents have greater freedom to operate and attempt roadside ambushes. Saturday's defused bomb was left barely 1,000 metres from the border.   

Last month, two dissidents were convicted of the 2009 murder of a policeman who was shot through the back of the head as he sat in his patrol car. In April 2011, a policeman was killed when a booby-trap bomb was detonated under his private car in his driveway.   

Both of the dead officers were Catholics, a reflection of how the past decade of peacemaking has dramatically transformed the makeup of Northern Ireland's once-overwhelmingly Protestant police. Today's force is 30 per cent Catholic.