{"id":34933,"date":"2013-03-04T15:21:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-04T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=34933"},"modified":"2013-03-04T15:21:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T13:21:00","slug":"northern-ireland-police-discovered-four-live-mortar-bombs-uk-news-34933","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/northern-ireland-police-discovered-four-live-mortar-bombs-uk-news-34933\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland Police discovered four live mortar bombs \/ UK News"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Police in Northern Ireland have condemned a foiled mortar bomb plot as “absolutely reckless”.<\/h1>\n

Army bomb disposal experts were called to the Letterkenny Road area of Londonderry after the four live devices were discovered in the back of a van last night and around 100 homes were evacuated.<\/p>\n

“These people were absolutely reckless,” said Chief Superintendent Stephen Cargin.<\/p>\n

“They were prepared to drive a van with four live mortar bombs, ready to go, through a built-up area in Derry city, putting the lives of thousands of people at risk.<\/p>\n

“It doesn\u2019t even bear thinking about what we could have been looking at today in terms of the consequences of these devices had they exploded.”<\/p>\n

He added: “These people are voices of the past, and there’s no future for them.”<\/p>\n

Sky’s Ireland correspondent David Blevins said: “It would appear that police have managed to thwart yet another attempted attack by dissident republicans.”<\/p>\n

Three men have been arrested, including two 37-year-olds and a 35-year-old. One was the driver of the van, another was following on a motorbike. The third was arrested elsewhere in Derry.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
A van on the outskirts of Londonderry as police evacuated about 100 homes after they discovered a "suspicious object", reported to be three mortars, in the van.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blevins added: “The police realised very quickly that they had intercepted the mortars primed for an attack in the vehicle which has a Southern Irish registration number plate.<\/p>\n

“The foiled attack bears the stamp of dissident republicans who are opposed to the political settlement in Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

“Until recently, there were three different factions – the Real IRA, the Continuity IRA and \u00d3glaigh na h\u00c9ireann (soldiers of Ireland) – but they are reported to have amalgamated into one group calling itself The New IRA.<\/p>\n

“The timing of any attack would be significant given that we are just four days away from a Westminster by-election in Northern Ireland in the mid-Ulster constituency – the seat which was formerly held by Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness.<\/p>\n

“That indeed may have been why a possible attack was being planned by those opposed to the peace settlement.”<\/p>\n

The four contenders for Thursday’s by-election are Sinn Fein Assembly Member Francie Molloy, independent Nigel Lutton, the Social Democratic and Labour Party’s Patsy McGlone and Eric Bullick of the cross-community Alliance Party.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police in Northern Ireland have condemned a foiled mortar bomb plot as “absolutely reckless”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,17,1,118,14],"tags":[37163,47131,47128,47126,47130,43163,47124,47123,47125,47127,47129,7831,37160,47132,47133],"class_list":["post-34933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-general","category-hot","category-world","tag-ira","tag-ira-bomb-plot","tag-londonderry","tag-mortar-bomb-plot","tag-northern-ireland-ira","tag-northern-ireland-police","tag-northern-ireland-police-discovered-bombs","tag-police-discovered-live-mortar-bombs","tag-police-in-northern-ireland","tag-reckless-mortar-bomb","tag-sinn-fein","tag-uk","tag-uk-northern-ireland","tag-ulster","tag-ulster-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}