Two men arrested over Northern Ireland car blast
Two men in their twenties were arrested in Northern Ireland’s of Londonderry on Sunday, less than a day after an apparent car bombing shook the center of the town. No injuries were reported when the blast destroyed a car parked in front of the local courthouse.
“Fortunately (the bombing) didn’t kill anybody but clearly it was a very significant attempt to kill people here in this community,” senior police representative Mark Hamilton told a news conference.
Police said they had received a warning about the car bomb at the courthouse while checking another suspicious vehicle elsewhere in the city. The initial call was directed to a charity hotline in England, before the warning was communicated to local police.
The car used for the blast was apparently stolen.
“At this stage it appears as though the vehicle used had been hijacked from a delivery driver in the Quarry Street area a short time before the explosion,” Hamilton said. He described the bomb as “crude” and unstable.
Throwback to the bad old days
The town of Londonderry was once a flashpoint in the fighting between Irish nationalist factions, who want to unite the island of Ireland, and unionists, who want to keep Northern Ireland within the UK.
The fight to push British forces out of Northern Ireland was spearheaded by the Irish Republican Army or the IRA. After decades of bombing attacks and other violent incidents, the IRA and the British authorities concluded the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. The IRA pledged to pursue its goals without using violence.
However, splinter paramilitary groups remain active to this day.
Suspected link with New IRA
On Sunday, police said their “main line of inquiry” was targeting a militant group known as the New IRA.
“The New IRA, like most dissident republican groups in Northern Ireland, is small, largely unrepresentative, and determined to drag people back to somewhere they don’t want to be,” he said.
Politicians across the island condemned the apparent attack in Londonderry. The leaders of Irish nationalist Sinn Fein, the party which once served as a political wing for the IRA, also responded with outrage.
Sinn Fein president Mary-Lou McDonald slammed the blast as a “mindless and outrageous attack” on the residents of the town.
Tension have grown in Northern Ireland over British plans to exit the EU, which could lead to a hard border with the Republic of Ireland.
dj/jm (AFP, Reuters, dpa)
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/two-men-arrested-over-northern-ireland-car-blast/a-47158884