* Devise as big one used in deadly 1998 Omagh bombing
* Province largely peaceful, sporadic threat remains
(Adds detail on size of bomb, quotes)
BELFAST, April 28 (Reuters) – Two bombs planted by militant
Irish nationalists, including one packed with enough explosives
to have killed anyone within a 50-metre (yard) radius, were
defused in Northern Ireland on Saturday, police said.
The 600-pound (270-kg) bomb, roughly the same size as one
used to kill 29 people in the town of Omagh in the single
deadliest attack of Northern Ireland’s three decades of violence
in 1998, was left in an abandoned vehicle in the town of Newry.
Police blamed nationalist groups opposed to a 1998 peace
deal that largely ended violence in the British-controlled
province, and said the device was fully primed to cause
devastation.
“To put it in perspective – anyone within 50 metres of this
device would have been killed and anyone within 100 metres,
seriously injured,” District Commander Chief Superintendent
Alasdair Robinson told a news conference.
“This was a very significant device. If this had exploded it
would have caused devastation.”
Army bomb disposal experts defused a similarly sized bomb in
the border town of Newry this time last year. Another bomb was
also found near the main Dublin-to-Belfast motorway earlier this
month that police said had the potential to kill.
The other bomb also made safe by the army on Saturday was
discovered under a parked car in Belfast where 80 people were
moved from their homes for five hours overnight. There was no
confirmation yet of its size.
Police investigating dissident activity also found guns and
ammunition in the mainly Catholic Ardoyne area of Belfast.
The 1998 peace agreement called a halt to more than three
decades of violence between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists
opposed to British rule of Northern Ireland and predominantly
Protestant unionists who wanted it to continue.
But dissidents, many of them belonging to splinter groups
that have broken away from the IRA, fight on with mostly
unsuccessful and sporadic gun and bomb attacks.
(Reporting by Ivan Little; Editing by Padraic Halpin/Maria
Golovnina)
