Children Hit By Blast As Alerts Continue

There has been a bomb attack and a series of security alerts across the North over the weekend.

The PSNI have condemned a no-warning bomb in Lurgan yesterday, which injured three children.

A senior PSNI officer likened the attack to the Omagh Bomb of 1998, as both cases saw the bomb warning given regarding one area of the town but the bomb actually exploded in another.

The most serious was in Lurgan, Co Armagh on Saturday when police found three elaborate hoax devices, while a fourth proved real and exploded without warning at 1pm in Killmaine Street, injuring three children. However, the PSNI said the injuries to the children were not life threatening.

The Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness issued a joint statement voicing their "disgust and shock" at the weekend bomb attack in Lurgan and rioting, which followed the blast.

The bomb attack was "designed to maim, injure and kill whoever happened to be close by, including children", said Mr Robinson.

The explosion cam exactly twelve years after the Troubles worst atrocity when in Omagh, 29 people and unborn twins were murdered in 1998 when dissident republicans detonated a car bomb, also having warned that the bomb would explode in a different part of town.

A Newry man who is a member of the local District Policing Partnership has his car destroyed by a petrol bomb, but Damian McKevitt said he would not be deterred by those behind the attack.

Elsewhere, two controlled explosions were also carried out at Gray's Lane, Greencastle, in north Belfast. Army bomb experts were called in to deal with the suspicious device and in a separate alert, five homes were evacuated after a suspicious object was discovered at Lisburn's Dunmurry Close.

Officers in Lisburn received a bomb warning at 2.20am on Saturday and a suspicious object was uncovered. A controlled explosion was carried out but the device was later declared a hoax.

Meanwhile, an object was found in a hedgerow on the Newcastle Road between Newcastle and Castlewellan on Saturday afternoon. Police said it was not suspicious.

(BMcC/KMcA)