Previously...
“Real IRA ‘plan to reignite hostilities’”
28/02/2009
SNIPPET: “The Real IRA plan to kill, maim or kidnap a Northern Ireland police officer - preferably a Catholic - to reignite hostilities, a terror source claimed yesterday.
A string of such threats has recently forced MI5 to secretly reassess the threat of a spectacular splinter group attack to “severe”.”
Two British military personnel were killed and four people were seriously wounded in a shooting at an army base in Northern Ireland, police said on Saturday.
“The two fatalities as I understand it are military personnel,” a police spokeswoman said, adding that two of the wounded were also from the army.
The shooting at the Massereene base near the town of Antrim followed reports that British special forces were back in the province gathering intelligence on dissident republicans.
A 1998 peace deal ended 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland between the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which seeks a united Ireland, and pro-British Protestant guerrilla groups.
Special forces operated in Northern Ireland during the conflict, in which more than 3.000 people were killed.
British troops were stood down in the province in 2007, but sporadic violence has continued despite the peace deal.
In January, a bomb was defused in Castlewellan, a town 30 miles south of the province’s capital Belfast. A splinter republican group claimed responsibility for planting the bomb.
( excerpt)
(Reporting by Anne Cadwallader, writing by Andras Gergely; editing by Ralph Gowling)
Previously...
“Two soldiers die in Northern Ireland barracks shooting
Gunmen posing as pizza delivery men target British base in Antrim as sectarian violence flares again”
By Sadie Gray
Sunday, 8 March 2009SHAREPRINT ARTICLE EMAIL ARTICLE TEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE
SNIPPET: “Last month security forces defused a 300lb bomb in Castlewellan, Co Down, which may have been intended for an attack on a nearby barracks.
And last year dissident republicans tried to kill PSNI officers in incidents in Derry City and Dungannon, Co Tyrone. Officers have been shot, attacked with rockets and landmines and had booby-traps set under their cars. Last year, 12 officers had to move house because of terrorist threats. In 2006 a shopping centre in Newry and a Homebase store in Belfast were bombed and badly damaged.
The most notorious of the dissident groups is the Real IRA, which was responsible for the deaths of 29 people in the Omagh bombing of 1998. They were also responsible for the attack on the Newry shopping centre.
However, operations by MI5 and the Special Branches in both Northern Ireland and Eire have thwarted plans to smuggle in weapons through Lithuania and the Balkans. Weapons and explosives are seized regularly and more than 90 dissidents are in jail on both sides of the border.”