About us
  |  
Advertising
  |  
Contact
  |  
Get Home Delivery
  |  
RSS
  |  
Share on your site
  |  
MULTIMEDIA
May 17, 2012
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bomb explodes outside MI5 headquarters in N. Ireland

The remains of the car bomb outside a British army base in the Belfast suburb of Holywood on Monday.
13 April 2010 / REUTERS, BELFAST
Republican militants exploded a bomb in a hijacked taxi behind a British army barracks in Northern Ireland on Monday, minutes after the transfer of police and justice powers from London to Belfast was completed.
The Real IRA, which last year killed two British soldiers at a barracks in the deadliest act of violence in Northern Ireland in more than a decade, claimed responsibility for the blast in a call to local media.

Police said one elderly man was injured in the attack at the barracks in County Down, which houses the headquarters of Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 in the province. Intelligence issues handled by MI5 will remain under British control despite Monday's transfer.

“The taxi driver got out [of the car] and shouted ‘It's a bomb, it's a bomb!' and we were evacuating the area when it exploded,” a police spokeswoman said. The blast at 12:24 a.m. (2324 GMT) coincided with the latest stage in the Northern Ireland peace process -- the handing over of powers to Belfast from London and a vote in the province's assembly on Monday on a new justice minister.

A leading assembly member and member of Northern Ireland's Policing Board, which oversees the work of the police, said the shifting of policing powers to local politicians for the first time in almost 40 years would prompt similar attacks.

“We are going to have to expect more of this over the next period of time, the devolution of policing and justice was never going to be just straightforward and easy,” Basil McCrea of the Ulster Unionist Party told Reuters.

Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward condemned the car bomb attack.

“The democratic transition [of justice powers] stands in stark contrast to the activity of a criminal few who will not accept the will of the majority of people of Northern Ireland. They have no support anywhere,” Woodward said in a statement.

There has been a series of attacks by dissident republicans in recent months as politicians edged towards an agreement on policing and justice, the last piece of the devolution process begun by a 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of violence.

 
Weather
City>>
ISTANBUL
Today Fri Sat
14C°
22C°
14C°
21C°
15C°
21C°
 

© Feza Gazetecilik A.Ş. 2007, Ahmet Taner Kışlalı Cad. No: 6, Bahçelievler - İstanbul 34194 Turkey, +90 (212) 454 1454, +90 (212) 454 1497(fax)