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Pipe bombers target RUC officer
There has been condemnation of a pipe bomb attack on the home of a policeman in County Down.
The officer spotted the device outside his house on the Glassdrummond Road in Annalong on Friday and raised the alarm. The area was cordoned off for several hours before the device was made safe.
The main Newcastle to Kilkeel road was closed again on Saturday as forensic experts carried out a follow-up search of the area. Police have said they do not yet know which group was responsible.
Ulster Unionist councillor Henry Reilly said he was appalled by the attack. "I know him well and he is an exceptionally well liked person by all sides of the community down here," said Mr Reilly. "His family have been there for generations and he is an accepted part of the community and it seems dreadful that this man has been targeted in this way. "We get on well together down here in the Kingdom of Mourne and we don't need this kind of thing," he said.
Meanwhile, the Royal Mail has said some of Saturday's postal deliveries to the United Kingdom were delayed. It followed a security alert at the Royal Mail sorting depot at Mallusk, near Belfast. The depot was evacuated for three hours on Friday while it was searched following a bomb warning. Nothing was found.
Saturday, 28 April, 2001, BBC News Online
Animal activists 'close to fascism'
Lord Winston has condemned the tactics of animal rights protesters taking direct action against Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) as "close to fascism".
Activists are continuing their campaign to shut down the controversial animal testing laboratory by targeting Japanese firms which have "links" to it. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac) has been boosted after a number of financiers they targeted backed away from HLS. The group adamantly denied being involved in violence after the HLS managing director was set upon by three attackers with baseball bats in February and employees cars were torched last year.
Lord Winston, chairman of the House of Lords Science Committee and renowned fertility expert, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Home Office regulations made sure there was no cruelty to animals at labs. "HLS is under the very strictest control from the Home Office which has the highest safety record for making sure that animals are treated humanely. "I dispute that there is cruelty at HLS." But he criticised some of the activists who wanted to shut the lab. Lord Winston said activists operated on the fringe of the law "One of the problems with these activist groups is they work at the very fringe of the law, they offer intimidation to people who disagree with them, they sometimes offer violence - we've seen photographs of it in the newspapers. "They object to something that is being done in a democratic country. "They operate in a way which leads one to consider that is very close to a fascist way of acting if you can't get what you personally want as a minority you are going to try to go to any kind of lengths at the limit of the law or just beyond it."
Greg Avery, of Shac, condemned violence and insisted arguments over protesters tactics were a smokescreen aimed at obscuring cruelty perpetrated by HLS. Cruelty footage He accused HLS of animal cruelty and breaking "good laboratory process" and denied they were only testing "vital" medicines. He said: "They are actually testing pesticides, agrochemicals ... "Animals were bleeding to death on the operating tables - there's over 70 hours of footage of animal cruelty."
Lord Winston maintained there were proper channels for protest, adding: "I am totally convinced that [HLS's] actions have been within the law and therefore are not cruel. "I think if they have evidence, these people, that there has been cruelty at HLS they have a proper course of action to make a proper complaint to the Home Office which deals with animal licensing."
On Thursday, Shac members protested at the Oxford base of Japan's third largest pharmaceuticals company Yamanouchi. The company denies any contact with HLS.
Last week, Shac activists occupied the roof of offices of broker Charles Schwab Europe in Birmingham, and held protests at the firm's London branch. Schwab later announced it was severing links with the research firm.
On Tuesday UK broker TD Waterhouse also said it would no longer deal in shares in HLS after a sustained campaign against it.
Wednesday, 18 April, 2001
Police condemn 'reckless' bombers
Police say lives could have been lost when "reckless" bombers failed to give a warning before exploding a device in a residential area of north London.
Anti-terrorist officers are now hunting for those responsible, thought to be members of the dissident Irish republican group, the Real IRA. The blast destroyed windows at the post office delivery depot in The Hyde, Hendon on Saturday.
The head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alan Fry said the device, designed to maim or injure, could have caused horrendous injuries or even death. No warning was given before the explosion in a residential area near the busy Edgware Road. "Whoever put that device down was totally reckless," Mr Fry said. "We could have had a serious accident." He said police had carried out a fingertip search of the scene and evidence will be sent to forensic laboratories to establish the type of explosive and device used. Police believe it may have contained up to a pound of high explosive, a similar size to the device at Hammersmith Bridge in June last year.
The blast comes just six weeks after a bomb, believed to have been planted by the same group, exploded outside BBC Television Centre in west London - at almost the same time on a Saturday night. The BBC bomb was also thought to have been the work of the Real IRA Mr Fry said he was starting on the assumption that the Hendon bomb was the work of the Real IRA, who may have planted the device as a calling card to show they were still active. "They have put devices down with no warnings before. "They have put devices down with tragic consequences, such as Omagh, where warnings given were totally inadequate, and they have not claimed responsibility for any of the devices that have been placed in London since 1 June last year," he said. "It is of the utmost importance that we find those responsible and bring them to justice."
The anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1916 at the General Post Office in Dublin, the current state of the Good Friday Agreement and ITV's screening of the film about Irish Republican hero Michael Collins were all being considered as possible motives for the blast, Mr Fry said.
Sunday, 15 April, 2001, BBC News Online
A bomb explosion at an open-air concert in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, has killed at least nine people and injured several others. The bomb went off in a park where thousands of people were attending events to celebrate the Bengali New Year.
We have been holding such concerts for 40 years...but never before have we become a target of terrorism Khairul Anam Shakil, concert organiser The emergency services immediately rushed in and cordoned off the area. A second smaller blast about 45 minutes later wounded a police officer.
Several thousand people had gathered at Ramna Park in central Dhaka for the festivities. Live broadcast Bangladesh's state-owned television was broadcasting the concert live at the time of the blast. Panicking men, women and children ran from the scene after the explosion. Police began a search off the area, and the injured were taken to nearby hospitals by ambulance and tricycle rickshaws. No organisation or group has admitted responsibility for the blasts.
Investigation Police say it is too early to determine who was behind the bomb attack. Sheikh Hasina has vowed to complete her term One report suggested the main explosion was triggered by a timing device, but witnesses said the bomb was being carried by a man, and could have gone off prematurely.
The explosions come amid a political stand-off over the date of the country's next general election, which has prompted a series of general strikes and many clashes. The BBC Dhaka correspondent, Kamal Ahmed, says the authorities have been expressing concern in recent weeks about the increased use of petrol bombs at political protests. The opposition, which has been pressing for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation to pave the way for early poll, has planned another three-day strike beginning 23 April. General elections are due in July and the prime minister's Awami League party has vowed to serve out its full term.
Saturday, 14 April, 2001, BBC News Online
The Pakistani authorities say a bomb has exploded in the province of Punjab.
It exploded in Muridkay, where the annual meeting of the militant Islamic organisation, Lashkar-e-Toyeba, is taking place. There were no casualties. No-one has admitted planting the bomb.
Security measures had been stepped up for the meeting because a number of bombs have exploded during previous gatherings of the Lashkar-e-Toyeba. The Lashkar-e-Toyeba says it has carried out a number of attacks on Indian military targets in the disputed region of Kashmir.
Friday, 13 April, 200, BBC News Online
The security forces believe they have discovered a so-called barrack buster mortar bomb in County Tyrone.
Army technical officers are examining a suspect van at the entrance of Altmore Forest, off the Reclain Road at Galbally, between Dungannon and Carrickmore. The device is being linked to dissident republican paramilitaries.
Chief Superintendent David Pickering said the operation to make the device safe would be slow and painstaking. Speaking on Thursday, he said: "Here is a time when the country is trying to get economically fit again and recover. "And it is just very disappointing to think that people at the same time are involved in putting together devices to cause disruption and destruction."
In February, a similar device was found in remote woodland in the Republic of Ireland. Gardai discovered the mark-15 type mortar near Newtowncunningham during a search of an area several miles from the border. The device did not contain any explosives. A similar device was used in an attack on Ebrington army base in Londonderry in January.
Thursday, 12 April, 2001, BBC News Online
Rome bomb blamed on anarchists
A home madebomb went off yesterday outside the Palazzo Rondinini in Rome, which houses the Association for Italian-US Relations and the International Affairs Institute.
Another device was found in Turin later. The blast in Rome blew out the palazzo doors, shattered windows, and destroyed a security door separating the building from the the Nuovo Circolo degli Scacchi, a club affiliated with Brooks's and the Travellers' clubs in London.
The Turin bomb, outside the former offices of Fiat, was detonated by police. While the bombs were made using different methods, seeming to exclude a link between them, their coincidence at the start of one of the fiercest national election campaigns in years was hard to ignore.
The Rome bomb, made from 12lb of dynamite, is believed to have been detonated by remote control. Magistrates were focusing their investigation on Leftist anarchist groups that may have targeted the Association of Italian-US Relations.
Giuliano Amato, Italy's centre-Left Prime Minister, said: "One can't help but note the coincidence in timing." Walter Veltroni, the centre-Left candidate for mayor of Rome, said: "I am worried for the G8 [summit of industrialised nations in July in Genoa]. I hope it wasn't a warning of something in the air."
11th April 2001, BBC Online
Lebanon parcel bomb injures Druze women
The Lebanese authorities are investigating an incident in which a suspected parcel bomb exploded, injuring three women - one of them seriously.
Two of those hurt in the blast at Aley, east of Beirut, are relatives of a member of parliament Akram Chehayeb who's a close associate of the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt.
Initial reports quoted police as saying the incident was not thought to be politically motivated. However after visiting the women in hospital, Mr Jumblatt said terrorism had settled nothing in the past and would not solve anything in the future.
Mr Jumblatt -- who's criticised the Syrian military presence in recent months -- called for dialogue to resolve the country's problems.
Wednesday, 11 April, 2001, BBC News Online
Bomb kills 11 at Sri Lanka pop concert
Eleven people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a bomb attack early yesterday at a packed pop concert in north-west Sri Lanka.
Police believe the bombing was part of a feud between rival gangs of youths. Eight people died immediately in the explosion and the stampede that followed at the football stadium in Kurunegala, 60 miles from Colombo, where more than 100,000 fans had gathered for a performance by two Indian stars. Three more died later in hospital.
There had been earlier clashes during the concert between two groups from rival villages. An increasing number of army deserters with bomb-making skills and weapons training are joining the gangs. Police say they control organised crime in the area including drug dealing. Officials have ruled out involvement by the separatist Tamil Tigers.
Monday 2 April 2001, BBC News Online
A powerful bomb on the border between Israel and the West Bank has left at least three people dead and several critically injured.
The Islamic militant group, Hamas, said one of its suicide bombers had detonated the bomb which went off close to a group of Israeli teenagers waiting for a bus near the central Israeli town of Kfar Saba.
The explosion follows two bombings in Jerusalem on Tuesday in which 30 people were injured and one of the bombers killed.
Reports of the latest incident came as the American ambassador to the United Nations vetoed moves in the Security Council to establish an international observer force to help protect Palestinians.
Reports say the bomber walked up to the youths as they waited for the school bus by a petrol station near the "green line" which separates Israel from the West Bank. Three youngsters, aged between 12 and 15, are reported to be in critical condition, wounded by nails in the bomb.The armoured bus was due to take them to a religious school in a settlement in the West Bank.
Police said other bombs had been defused earlier on Wednesday near a market in the coastal town of Netanya and in the central city of Petah Tikva. Hamas said the bombing represented the "continuation of the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation".
Wednesday, 28 March, 2001, BBC News Online
An explosion, believed to be caused by a car bomb, has wounded several people in a commercial suburb Talpiot of west Jerusalem.
Israeli police say the blast occurred near a shopping mall which is popular with Israelis.
Tuesday, 27 March, 2001, BBC News Online
China arrests 'explosives supplier'
Jin Ruchao reportedly confessed to the bombings Police in China have arrested a man for allegedly supplying explosives used in bomb attacks which killed 108 people, state media said on Tuesday.
Wang Yushun allegedly made the explosives to order for Jin Ruchao, who police say has confessed to the bombings in the northern city of Shijiazhuang. Mr Wang, an illegal explosives manufacturer, was paid $114 for supplying ammonium nitrate, packed in more than 10 yellow plastic bags marked "chicken feed", the state-run Xinhua news agency said. He also taught Mr Jin, who police say acted alone, how to make bombs, the report said.
According to the Xinhua report based on information from police, Mr Jin rushed between his targets using taxis to detonate each explosion personally on 16 March. After the blasts, he then headed to the south of the country - 2,000 kilometres (1250 miles) away - to Beihai, a beach resort in Guanxi province, where he was arrested after one of the biggest police manhunts for nearly 20 years.
The partially deaf suspect, who often communicates through written notes, was said to have been motivated by revenge. He has also been accused of killing his girlfriend on 9 March.
Bombings have been carried out by angry workers in the past and in recent years, more than one million textile workers have lost their jobs.
Tuesday, 27 March, 2001, BBC News Online
Many casualties in Russia bombings
Two bombs have exploded in southern Russia, killing at least eleven people and wounding more than thirty others.
The attacks happened in the region of Stavropol, close to the separatist republic of Chechnya. The first bomb was hidden in a car and exploded at a market in the town of Mineralnye Vody; the second detonated near a police station in another town, Yessentuki. No one has admitted carrying out the attacks.
Russian officials said a special representative of President Vladimir Putin had left immediately for the scene of the bombings.
Saturday, 24 March, 2001, BBC News Online
A car bomb explosion in the north-eastern Spanish city of Rosas has killed one policeman and injured three others in a residential district.
The bomb, estimated by local officials to contain over 20kg (44 lbs) of explosives, went off at 2300 (2200GMT) on Saturday, in a car parked outside a hotel. Windows were blown out at this hotel in Rosas Hours later, bomb disposal experts detonated a second car bomb in the seaside resort of Gandia, in south-eastern Spain.
Police have said they believe the armed Basque separatist group ETA was responsible for planting both bombs. ETA has regularly employed car bombs in its 33-year-old campaign for Basque independence. State radio identified the dead policeman as 32-year-old Santos Santamaria, who had been helping to clear the area after a telephone warning. He was the fifth victim this year of attacks attributed to ETA, and the 25th since ETA ended a truce in December 1999.
The second bomb was detonated just before dawn in a controlled explosion that damaged several cars and nearby buildings. The bomb had been placed in a car parked on the sea front at Gandia, which is a popular tourist resort. Police had been looking for the booby-trapped car after a telephone warning to the newspaper Gara.
The newspaper, based in the city of San Sebastian, has close links with Basque separatists. The French AFP news agency quoted police as saying the car that exploded at Rosas had been stolen from Gandia, while the one at Gandia had a Barcelona number plate.
18 March 2001, BBC Online
Bomb fears prompt CCTV campaign
The Metropolitan Police are launching a major campaign to ensure closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras are working properly amid fears of further bomb attacks.
The three-week publicity drive starts on Monday. Dirty lenses and old tapes can easily destroy picture quality and following a few simple guidelines can give the police vital evidence. Officers from the anti-terrorist branch are still checking hours of CCTV footage recovered after a bomb exploded just yards from the front door of BBC Television Centre in west London.
Assistant commissioner of special operations David Veness warned that the attack marked a serious escalation of the campaign by Irish dissidents opposed to the peace agreement. The anti-terrorist branch expect further bombs in London and other parts of the country, and members of the public are being warned to remain vigilant.
On Sunday, bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion on a vehicle outside the headquarters of the BBC World Service. They later discovered that the vehicle, outside Bush House at Aldwych, central London, did not contain any explosives.
Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir John Stevens emphasised that without CCTV it would have been more difficult to bring nail bomber David Copeland to justice. The cameras captured him roaming around Brixton on the afternoon when he planted his first deadly device.
18 March 2001, BBC Online
The Taleban authorities in Afghanistan say a bomb attack in Kabul on Saturday was an attempt to kill the education minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
The bomb, planted in a car, killed at least five people. Amir Khan Muttaqi was said to have been slightly hurt by flying glass. He survived a similar attempt on his life two years ago.
18 March 2001, BBC World Service
Army bomb experts examine package
Army bomb experts are examining a suspicious package posted through the door of a house in Dungannon, County Tyrone.
The householder brought the package into Dungannon RUC station on Friday morning. The police have cordoned off the Quarry Lane area of the town while they examine the package.
The police are asking drivers to stay away from the area.
16th March 2001, BBC News Online
Police sift for BBC bomb clues
Anti-terrorist officers are assessing information gleaned from the public about the possible movements of the taxi which carried the BBC Television Centre bomb.
Police have been questioning motorists and passers-by in Wood Lane, west London, where the bomb went off and near a breakers yard in north London where the distinctive red taxi was bought. They are anxious to trace the movements of the taxi from when it was bought until it was left by two men outside the BBC premises.
Similarities have been found in items used in the bombing of the BBC's Television Centre in west London and attacks in Northern Ireland. Detectives believe home-made explosives were packed into blue containers and loaded into the red taxi involved in the bombing. Numerous pieces of blue plastic recovered from a wide area after the explosion on Saturday of last week are being forensically examined.
Detectives investigating the blast say containers similar to the barrel-type have been used since February 2000 in paramilitary attacks in Ireland. Those attacks are thought to have been the responsibility of the Real IRA. A blue plastic barrel-type container was found close to the scene of an explosion on 30 June last year on the Belfast-to-Dublin railway line at Newry.
Police still need information about the cab used in the attack Anti-terrorist Branch officers had previously been working on the theory that a lone terrorist, thought to be from the real IRA, was responsible for the attack. Detectives investigating the blast say two men got out of the taxi hours before it exploded. Metropolitan Police say the men got out of the taxi and walked along Wood Lane towards Shepherds Bush. They were a short distance away from the taxi when one of the men went back and removed a bag from the vehicle, said police. Police believe there may have been a road rage incident involving the man driving the cab.
CCTV footage Officers are linking the BBC bombing to three previous attacks last year in west London. These were the bomb left on Hammersmith Bridge, the device found on railway tracks at Acton and the rocket-launched missile attack on the MI6 headquarters in central London.
BBC News Online, Monday, 12 March, 2001
Bomb threat to pro-hunt women MPs
Two women MPs have been warned by police that they face being bombed by anti-hunting fanatics after a hit list was discovered containing the names of prominent supporters of the sport.
Kate Hoey, the sports minister, and Llin Golding, the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, have been told to check underneath their cars for explosives and examine their post for booby traps.
The warning comes amid mounting concern about the increasingly violent and intimidating tactics used by extremists and a series of attacks on scientists and laboratories. The Animal Liberation Front yesterday refused to condemn the threats to the women MPs.
Tensions have risen since the Government introduced its Bill to reform hunting with hounds. Miss Hoey is the most prominent defender of foxhunting in the Government while Mrs Golding is co-chairman of the Middle Way Group, which supports tighter controls on hunting rather than an outright ban. They were the only Labour MPs to vote against the failed Bill to outlaw hunts piloted by Mike Foster.
Mrs Golding confirmed yesterday that she had been given security advice after police obtained a list of targets. She said she would not be deterred from her campaign for hunting to continue with animal welfare safeguards. A number of Labour MPs have told the women that they privately support their stance on hunting but are too afraid to say so in public.
Robin Webb, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front, last night refused to condemn the extremists who targeted the MPs. He said: "This is something the ALF will neither condone or condemn. We fully understand the anger and frustration which leads people to take this type of action. The Labour Party has failed to keep all those pledges it made to animal rights campaigners in the run-up to the last election. "Many people feel they have been conned and let down by New Labour. The whole movement has taken a step towards radicalism. The argument has been used, quite justifiably in my opinion, that if the animals could fight for themselves there would be a lot of dead animal abusers already."
Mr Webb said the list of targets was likely to have been drawn up by two extreme groups, the Animal Rights Militia and the Justice Department. Both advocate violence. He said: "Both of these groups have sent viable postal devices over the years, although so far the devices sent by the groups had only a small amount of incendiary material in them. The worst anyone had received from a claimed device was burned hands."
He admitted that members of the ALF were also members of both those organisations. "People who are ALF members do work for other organisations. The ALFcannot be held responsible for actions they carry out as result of membership of another organisation." Last month Brian Cass, the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, was attacked by animal rights extremists.
Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, is under pressure to use new anti-terrorist legislation to ban animal rights groups which threaten or use violence. Simon Hart, a spokesman for the Countryside Alliance, last night called for it to be extended to cover animal rights protests. He said: "The Government did hint that very extreme groups would be put on the list. It hasn't happened yet but it almost certainly should."
Daily Telegraph, Sunday 11 March 2001
Police investigate bomb incidents
The Royal Ulster Constabulary is investigating two separate bombing incidents in Northern Ireland. No-one was injured when a pipe bomb exploded in Belfast and a petrol bomb was thrown at the home of a County Antrim family. The remains of the device were found in an entry, at the rear of Channing Street, in the Castlereagh Road area. No damage was caused in the blast and a number of items were taken away for forensic examination. At least 50 pipe bomb attacks have been recorded in the province since the start of the year, many of them in County Antrim and north Belfast. RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan has blamed the largest loyalist paramilitary organisation, the Ulster Defence Association, for most of the incidents.
BBC Online Sunday, 11 March, 2001
Man in court over letter bombs
A man has appeared at court in Chester to face 15 charges of sending explosive devices through the post.
Glynn Christopher Harding of Minshall New Road, Crewe, is accused of sending the devices between the 15th of December last year and the 21st of February this year. One of his alleged victims was the owner of a fish and chip shop in Holywell, north Wales. The device - which was delivered through the post to Davies's fish bar in January this year - exploded in the shop area which was full of customers. No one was injured.
Mr Harding was remanded in custody at Chester Crown Court and the case was adjourned until 27 April. His arrest followed an investigation involving five police forces.
Inquiries were stepped up after a parcel containing nails exploded at a fish and chip shop in the North Wales town of Holywell. A six-year-old girl from Congleton, Cheshire, suffered leg injuries when she opened a package addressed to her father. Detectives also investigated an alleged letter bombing that injured a 58-year-old sheep farmer near Ripon. A further incident saw a woman taken to hospital after a device exploded as she opened mail delivered to a livestock auction firm in East Yorkshire.
BBC News Online, Tuesday, 6 March, 2001
RUC chief warns of further bombs
The RUC's Chief Constable has said he is convinced the Real IRA was responsible for the bomb attack on BBC Television Centre.
Sir Ronnie Flanagan warned that the Irish dissident republicans would probably stage more attacks on mainland Britain. His grim prediction came as police continued their hunt for those responsible for Sunday's attack in London's Shepherd's Bush.
The RUC chief constable told BBC2's Newsnight that people needed to be vigilant and offer the police whatever help they could. He said there were likely to be coded warnings for further attacks by republicans on high-profile sites. "We believe that they would have the intention to carry out further attacks," he said. "What they want is maximum impact. What they want is to grab the headlines." No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack on the BBC building.
Major political parties in Northern Ireland are to meet to discuss the future of the peace process - but Downing Street said this is unrelated to the bomb attack. Police forces across the UK have remained on full alert.
BBC News Online, Tuesday, 6 March, 2001
Police fear Real IRA bomb blitz
Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch had been bracing itself for a strike in the capital since last autumn, with senior officers nervously predicting that at least one dissident terrorist cell was operating in London.
"We've had three attacks from the Real IRA already," said one detective recently. "We're expecting a fourth." The waiting ended early yesterday. A D-registered red and black taxi parked outside the main entrance of BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane at 11pm on Saturday, its headlights blazing. Twelve hours earlier the cab had been sold to an Irishman from a used car yard in Picketts Lock, Edmonton, north-east London, half an hour after it had been put on sale. "A taxi's good," the buyer remarked, as he paid £300 in cash. "You never get stopped in a taxi."
The man, described as white, 30, and wearing a baseball cap, was right. At 11.22pm, someone rang a hospital in London and said: "There is a maroon taxi parked outside the BBC. And there is a bomb in the taxi to go off any minute." The caller gave a recognised codeword. Two minutes later a similar message was received at a charity in London. Significantly, the codeword mentioned was also used to warn police about an explosion by a railway line in Acton, west London, last July. TNT, the explosive used at Acton, matched the type packed into a device which damaged Hammersmith Bridge in June last year.
The gut instinct of officers is that the man who abandoned the taxi in Shepherd's Bush was the person who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the secret intelligence service building, commonly known as MI6, in Vauxhall, London, last September. "The guy's obviously got loads of bottle," said a source. "We're linking all of these attacks to dissidents."
The size and style of yesterday's bomb, which contained between 10lb and 20lb of high explosive, and the choice of target have particularly worried detectives. Intelligence sources knew the Real IRA wanted to strike in London, probably with a car bomb, but believed the terrorists had been thwarted by undercover operations conducted by the RUC; in October, a 500lb fertiliser device was discovered in a horsebox in west Belfast, which may have been bound for London.
Yesterday's bomb was the biggest detonated by dissidents on this side of the Irish sea, and may have been planted at the BBC in revenge for a Panorama programme which named four members of the Real IRA who were allegedly responsible for the Omagh bomb that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, in 1998.
Last week, the BBC team won several top awards for the documentary, which was presented by John Ware. "Panorama definitely caused the dissidents some pain," said a security source. "It put pressure on the Gardai and the attorney general who were seen to be allowing these people to carry on normal lives when a reporter from the BBC was going around calling them terrorists."
Security personnel believe there are up to 10 Real IRA terrorists working in London, and that their bomb-making equipment seems to be hidden in the city rather than in Ireland. Of even greater concern to Scotland Yard, MI5 and the RUC is evidence that suggests the Provisional IRA, which is observing the ceasefire, has also been involved in reconnaissance missions in England, as well as attempting to procure weapons from the US.
Although there is thought to be some dialogue between low-ranking members of both terrorist groups, security sources believe Provisional and Real IRA are conducting separate campaigns, raising fears that London is facing a twin threat.
At the moment, though, police are concentrating on the danger posed by the Real IRA, the largest renegade republican group opposed to the Good Friday agreement. Its membership is estimated at between 200 and 400 members, north and south of the Irish border, and it is particularly strong in south Armagh/north Louth and parts of west Belfast. Its political wing, the 32-County Sovereignty Committee, is fronted by Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, sister of the hunger striker Bobby Sands, and her husband, Michael McKevitt, who were run out of their printing business in Dundalk in the Irish Republic by local people after the Omagh bomb.
Sources believe the Real IRA is stepping up efforts to destabilise the peace process in an attempt to put pressure on Sinn Fein not to make a deal on paramilitary disarmament. There has been a steady drift of disaffected provisionals to the Real IRA; others have threatened to defect, especially in hardline south Armagh, if any weapons are decommissioned. The group is believed to have secured some Provisional IRA arms and has also tried to buy weapons from eastern Europe, in particular the Balkans, with money from armed robberies and fund-raising in the US. Sources believe up to a dozen of the Provisional IRA's top bomb-makers are now Real IRA members. "You don't need thousands of footsoldiers if you have the brains," said one source.
Monday March 5, 2001 The Guardian
Israel on alert for more bombs
The authorities in Israel have stepped up security in shopping malls, bus stations and other public places following Sunday's suicide bomb attack.
Police chief Shlomo Aharonishki said he had ordered officers to drop other duties, even at the expense of fighting crime. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack in the coastal town of Netanya, in which a suicide bomber and three Israelis died.
But the militant Palestinian group, Hamas, has vowed to carry out more attacks inside Israel. It says it has 10 volunteers ready to carry out suicide missions as soon as Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon takes office, which is expected to be within days.
There have already been three other bomb attacks inside Israel this year Cadets and volunteers have also been mobilised and police and soldiers have also taken up positions along the so-called Green Line, which separates Israel from the West Bank.
But Mr Aharonishki warned that it was impossible to hermetically seal Israel's borders. Mr Sharon, who has pledged to restore security to Israel after more than five months of fighting with the Palestinians, has blamed Mr Arafat for not doing enough to prevent attacks.
BBC online Monday, 5 March, 2001
