Police in Northern Ireland have condemned a car-bomb attack on a police station as an attempt to undermine the 1998 agreement that brought peace to the region.<\/p>\n
The bomb, fashioned from a compressed gas cylinder, exploded as police were evacuating nearby residents in Dunmurry, on the outskirts of Belfast, on Saturday night (local time), Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Singleton told reporters on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis clearly demonstrates that what this type of device may have lacked in terms of its sophistication and scale, it more than made up for in its reckless unpredictability,\u201d Singleton said. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor a device like this to have been deployed against police and in such proximity to the public was idiotic. It was absolute madness.\u201d<\/p>\n
The incident took place at about 10.30pm (local time) after the attackers stopped a delivery driver, placed an improvised bomb in his vehicle and ordered him to drive to the police station, Singleton said.<\/p>\n
Brendan Mullan, chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, said the device \u201cwas sent to kill officers and cause maximum harm in an attack which was in the heart of a residential area.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people have spoken when they overwhelmingly endorsed the Good Friday Agreement\u201d in 1998, Mullan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuch acts of violence have no place in a society committed to peace. We stand united in condemnation of those responsible for this terror, and in voicing support for the work of the officers and staff of the PSNI.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the second incident at a police station in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
On March 30, police foiled a similar attack on a police station in Lurgan, about 32 kilometres southwest of Dunmurry. <\/p>\n
Two masked men stopped a delivery driver, placed an explosive device in the trunk of his vehicle and forced him at gunpoint to take the device to the police station, according to authorities. Police carried out a controlled explosion after about 100 homes were evacuated.<\/p>\n
The Lurgan attack was probably carried out by dissident Republican groups in a \u201cpathetic attempt to remain relevant and provoke fear,\u201d police said.<\/p>\n
The Good Friday Agreement largely ended decades of violence involving Republican groups opposed to British rule and others who wanted to maintain the region\u2019s ties to the United Kingdom. Dissident groups that oppose the peace process still carry out sporadic attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police in Northern Ireland have condemned a car-bomb attack on a police station as an attempt to undermine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":399089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":["post-399088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/399089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}