A bomb exploded at a police station in Northern Ireland, heightening tension ahead of a controversial Protestant march yesterday.
“We had a report of an abandoned car and several houses were being evacuated when there was an explosion,” a police spokesman told Reuters. One policewoman was slightly wounded. Northern Ireland is in the throes of a fragile peace process after truces by the nationalist Irish Republican Army and other pro-Irish and pro-British guerrilla groups. Yesterday’s blast was at Stewartstown Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station, southwest of Belfast. “A big blue flash came over the rooftops,” a witness told Reuters.
The bombing follows a week of violence by hardline Protestants demonstrating against a decision to ban the pro-British Orange Order from marching through a Roman Catholic enclave in the town of Portadown during an annual parade.
Tension over the parade has upset the efforts of the uneasy home-rule coalition administration to restore normality after three decades of communal strife and guerrilla war. British Prime Minister Tony Blair appealed on Saturday for calm before yesterday’s march.
Police said no one had claimed responsibility for the bomb. A member of the public had alerted the police to an abandoned car outside the RUC station and police moved quickly to evacuate the area before the bomb exploded, police said. Local resident Gerald Devlin said police told him to evacuate his house. “They said there’s a bomb and we had to get out. I thought at first it was a hoax. We don’t get any trouble here. Everyone gets on rightly (well),” Devlin said. Police and soldiers sealed off the bomb site behind white tapes strung across the street, making it difficult to make out the extent of the damage. Reuters