Distretto Nord

Adams sfida i responsabili dello scoppio di Newry

Adams challenges Newry bombers

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has challenged those behind a car bomb attack in Newry to face the public and justify their actions, branding them ‘ceasefire soldiers’ who ‘have no interest in a united Ireland’.

Autobomba a Newry | Newry carbomb“Let them come forward if they have any stomach or guts at all and defend what’s going on,” he said of those who planted the device outside Newry courthouse in Co Down.

Dissident republicans have been blamed for the 250lb bomb which went off at 10.37pm on Monday night, as officers were still evacuating the area.

‘Miracle’

The blue Mazda vehicle, which carried registration plates from Co Monaghan, was abandoned after being reversed against the gates of the court.

Police said it was a “miracle” no-one was injured or killed in the explosion.

PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott said there was “absolutely no excuse for bringing bombs onto our streets.”

“It was clearly reckless at the best and callous at the worst,” he said.

“But added to that, the timing given was severely limited.”

Coded warnings were phoned in to a local hospital at 10.20pm and a local business at 10.22pm giving officers about 17 minutes to clear the area before the bomb exploded.

The gates of the heavily fortified courthouse were badly damaged and people for miles around said they clearly heard the blast and windows were shaken.

Newry city centre was sealed off on Tuesday as police forensic experts combed area for clues.

Many road closures have since been lifted but New Street remains closed.

Classes at nearby Windsor Hill Primary School have also been cancelled.

Chief Constable Baggott said he understood the frustration of residents, but that the disruption was unavoidable.

“It’s important that we take as long as it takes to deal with this scene (in Newry) as a crime scene, do everything we can forensically to understand what’s happened, to understand what we’ve got because that’s essential to bringing these people to justice,” he said.

“And the second thing is in relation to both (Keady and Newry) we ask some of our technical officers to do a job that quite frankly I would never want to do personally.

“We ask them to do a job responsibly to defuse and deal with devices that are put there to maim or kill.

“I have been a little disappointed by some of the comments, such as ‘why couldn’t you do it quicker?’,” he added.

“Well I will never, never ask anybody that’s tasked on our behalf with defusing things to ‘hurry it up’, because quite frankly we owe it to these brave courageous people to give them as much time as they need to deal with these things on our behalf.”

The Stormont Assembly opened its proceedings on Tuesday with cross-party condemnation of the attack, which comes just days after a mortar bomb failed to detonate outside a police station in nearby Keady village.

Last March dissidents shot dead two soldiers at Massereene army barracks in Antrim. Two days later they gunned down police constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, Co Armagh as he answered a call for help.

In September police discovered a 600lb bomb in the south Armagh village of Forkhill.

Last month a Catholic police officer was seriously injured in car bomb attack in Co Antrim while a number of police stations have been shot at in recent weeks.

The Newry attack is thought to be the first time a large car bomb has exploded in Northern Ireland since the Real IRA bombing of Omagh in 1998.

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René Querin

Di professione grafico e web designer, sono appassionato di trekking e innamorato dell'Irlanda e della sua storia. Insieme ad Andrea Varacalli ho creato e gestisco Les Enfants Terribles.

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