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An Irish Republican group New IRA could be behind an overnight car bomb attack outside a police station near Belfast late on Saturday, authorities said.
According to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), although there were no fatal casualties, two infants were among the residents evacuated after the explosion in Dunmurry, southwest of the Northern Irish capital.
The car bomb went off after a “gas cylinder-type device” was placed in a delivery driver’s hijacked car and driven to the location, police said.
The attack followed a similar attempted bombing on 30 March, when the device failed to explode outside a police station in the nearby town of Lurgan, with paramilitary group the New IRA claiming responsibility for that attack.
“There are very many similarities between the two incidents, and… our early working hypothesis is that this may well be the work of the New IRA,” Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Singleton of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) told reporters on Sunday.
Investigators are to “keep an open mind,” and “it’s still the very early stages of the investigation,” he added, noting that the preliminary investigations showed that “murderous intent and capability” still exist within paramilitaries in the UK territory.
“Police personnel immediately — and I have to say, extremely courageously, literally running into danger, placing themselves in harm’s way — evacuated nearby homes in order to protect the community,” Constable Singleton said.
Starmer condemns attack
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the attack on X, adding that those responsible would be brought to justice.
Videos circulated on social media showing the vehicle on fire at the police station around midnight. According to local media, fire crews and police worked to put out the blaze.
Politicians have denounced the incident, with Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, from the pro-Irish unity Sinn Fein party, saying those behind the attack “speak for absolutely no one.”
Gavin Robinson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party — Northern Ireland’s main pro-UK party — called the incident “deeply concerning.”
“If this was another attempt by dissident republicans to intimidate communities and target the police, then it must be met with the full force of the law,” he said.
Although they are smaller than the Provisional IRA which put a halt to its violent campaign in 2005, dissident republican groups have in the past used mortars and improvised explosive devices.