Northern Ireland police decry bombers' 17-minute warning

[The_Dude 1,142]

Northern Ireland police decry bombers' 17-minute warning

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK

Associated Press Writer

DUBLIN (AP) -- Northern Ireland's police commander denounced Irish Republican Army dissidents Tuesday for giving his officers just 17 minutes to evacuate the center of a border town before a car bomb detonated.

Monday night's attack on the courthouse in Newry, between Dublin and Belfast, was the first of its kind in nearly a decade.

Police said they still were trying to steer people away from the bomb when it exploded, causing little damage to the heavily fortified courthouse and injuring no one. Nearby residents said their homes shook like an earthquake from the blast but their windows did not shatter, and traffic continued to pass by the flaming remains of the car until police shut down the road.

Police said the bomb contained 100 kilograms (225 pounds) of homemade explosive - much smaller than typical IRA car bombs. It appeared to catch police off guard because, unlike more than a dozen previous similar threats across Northern Ireland, this one actually detonated.

The police's painstaking search for clues Tuesday brought heavy disruption to Newry, a shopping-center hub normally full of bargain-hunters from the neighboring Republic of Ireland.

Police warned that parts of central Newry might be shut down through Wednesday as forensic officers in white boiler suits comb every surface within a kilometer (half-mile) for evidence. They hoped to retrieve DNA traces of the bomb maker or driver from the obliterated remains of the bomb and car.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the IRA dissidents' latest bid to undermine Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant government, the central achievement of a U.S.-brokered 1998 peace accord.

Both sides in the fragile coalition are planning next month to elect a new justice minister who would take responsibilities from Britain to oversee the province's police and courts - a move bitterly opposed by IRA die-hards because it could strengthen Catholic support for law and order.

Clinton, speaking alongside Britain's visiting secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Shaun Woodward, called the Newry blast "another cowardly act of violence by those who prefer to plant bombs than to argue for votes and to participate in the political process."

Police said callers using recognized dissident IRA code words called Newry's hospital and businesses after ramming the car bomb into the courthouse's front security gates. They said the blast came just 17 minutes after police got word.

"The time we got to respond was very limited. It was reckless and callous," Chief Constable Matt Baggott told reporters.

Baggott said his officers had arrested 130 suspected IRA dissidents over the past year to suppress their activities. But he said the dissident threat would be defeated only when the extremists' own family, friends and neighbors in hard-line Irish nationalist areas tipped off police.

During the worst decades of Northern Ireland's conflict - when the IRA regularly planted vehicle bombs ranging from 500 pounds to 2,000 pounds (250 kilograms to 1,000 kilograms) - police became expert at evacuating people from the imminent blast area. Citizens were usually maimed or killed when police received less than 30 minutes' warning and no precise description of the bomb's location.

The outlawed IRA, which renounced violence and disarmed in 2005, typically telephoned warnings when its bombers targeted civilian sites such as shopping centers. Its chief goal in those cases was to inflict financial losses and portray Northern Ireland as ungovernable.

Today's IRA splinter groups also sometimes make telephoned warnings, but with less precision - and often only after their homemade devices are abandoned or fail to explode.

In the most notorious case, the Real IRA faction made three calls on Aug. 15, 1998, warning of a car bomb near the courthouse in Omagh on a bustling Saturday afternoon. Police moved crowds of shoppers and workers away from that building - and unwittingly straight into the blast. Twenty-nine people, mostly women and children, were killed in the single deadliest explosion from the entire Northern Ireland conflict.

IRA dissidents last exploded car bombs in 2001, when a trio of blasts shook London and the central English city of Birmingham to little effect. That bombing team was caught and imprisoned.

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[Audy_Rob 26]

Still. it is fortunate no one was injured.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Any warming is better than the you-know-who suicide bombers zero warning policy.

How's this for a 2 day body count?

2/22/10 to 2/24/10

[The_Dude 1,142]

Any warming is better than the you-know-who suicide bombers zero warning policy.

How's this for a 2 day body count?

2/22/10 to 2/24/10

You can't compare those two. The IRA wants headlines and destruction of property.

[jundp 191]

They need to cut this ####### out before I take 22 high school kids there in June!

[The_Dude 1,142]

They need to cut this ####### out before I take 22 high school kids there in June!

What part are you going to? I used to spend summers there with family. Although a bombing like this is bad, it's a far cry from the 80's and even 90's. Back then, Belfast and Derry could be quite tricky to navigate.

[NotworkSte 19]

Any warming is better than the you-know-who suicide bombers zero warning policy.

How's this for a 2 day body count?

2/22/10 to 2/24/10

I am going to disagree with you here, but I am going to do so carefully because I don't intend to come across sounding like I am meaning some persons life might be worth more than others.

There is a difference. It's a well known fact the IRA give warnings and have the detonation go off early. It's a standard tactic, designed for some very specific purposes.

However, I would counter that while an arguement can be made that a warning to try to get civilians out can be better than nothing,

1 - Police and security services are going in to a situation to help people escape knowing at some random point the bomb will explode. Yet many of them went into this situation, and a good many never made it out. How many of these people, including my parents, did this time after time, I will never know.

2 - Warning and early explosions were often a tactic to maximise death, at times people may have been safer where they were, so let the bomb go off when everyone is mid evacuation, likely to produce more deaths or injuries. Suicide bombers take opportunistic targets, an explosion ahead of the time given is designed to try to get even more people killed. Bomb siting is also carefully controlled so that the following pressure wave will travel down the escape routes.

These warnings were very far from humanitarian so I personally wouldn't agree they are in way "better" than no warning.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

I think any bombing is savage but a warning is better than no warning.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Another hit from the maestro

[jundp 191]

What part are you going to? I used to spend summers there with family. Although a bombing like this is bad, it's a far cry from the 80's and even 90's. Back then, Belfast and Derry could be quite tricky to navigate.

We're going mid-June to mid-July to the south and then also to Derry and Belfast. Yeah, I was there in the mid-90s before the Good Friday Peace Accord, so I remember. I assured my kids and their parents life is vastly different and then one of them comes to me the other day with "Hey Ms P did you know this had happened?"

[Peikko 1,575]

The border areas around Newry were always more dodgy than other parts of the North. Lived in the Triangle area for years, beautiful but WINDY!

Will you be visting the North coast at all? Giants Causeway, Cushendun/dall, Glens of Antrim? Dunluce? Very beautiful if you get a nice day.

[Pooky 3,942]

I am going to disagree with you here, but I am going to do so carefully because I don't intend to come across sounding like I am meaning some persons life might be worth more than others.

There is a difference. It's a well known fact the IRA give warnings and have the detonation go off early. It's a standard tactic, designed for some very specific purposes.

However, I would counter that while an arguement can be made that a warning to try to get civilians out can be better than nothing,

1 - Police and security services are going in to a situation to help people escape knowing at some random point the bomb will explode. Yet many of them went into this situation, and a good many never made it out. How many of these people, including my parents, did this time after time, I will never know.

2 - Warning and early explosions were often a tactic to maximise death, at times people may have been safer where they were, so let the bomb go off when everyone is mid evacuation, likely to produce more deaths or injuries. Suicide bombers take opportunistic targets, an explosion ahead of the time given is designed to try to get even more people killed. Bomb siting is also carefully controlled so that the following pressure wave will travel down the escape routes.

These warnings were very far from humanitarian so I personally wouldn't agree they are in way "better" than no warning.

I think maybe the SAS will be getting a call to pay another visit to Ulster. Anti-terrorism with extreme prejudice.