Senior gardai last night expressed concern that republicans were intending to create a crisis in the North at another crucial point as political negotiations on a Stormont executive were coming to a head and the annual Drumcree crisis is approaching.
While the exact affiliation of the bombers was unclear, it appeared they were transporting a partly-prepared bomb across the Border to Derry where it would be prepared and detonated somewhere in the North.
The completed bomb, with around 300 lbs of explosives and an amount of incendiary liquid, could have been as powerful as the device used in Omagh. The facts that the type of bomb is like others used by dissidents and that it was being moved into Northern Ireland at a time of heightening tension are characteristics shared with other attacks mounted by the dissidents in the past two years.
The dissidents who carried out the Omagh bombing mounted two attacks at crucial points in the political deliberations around the time of the Belfast Agreement. They intended carrying out bombings, probably with serious consequences in terms of fatalities and injuries - both in the week before the Belfast Agreement talks were about to conclude and at St Patrick's Day when all sides to the agreement were in Washington for key talks with President Clinton.
On both these occasions the gardai were able to intercept the bombs and prevent a potential crisis in the North. The pre-St Patrick's Day bomb was intercepted at Hackballscross, Co Louth, and the other bomb was stopped at Dun Laoghaire ferry port on April 2nd prior to being transported across to the Irish Sea, possibly to be detonated at the Aintree Grand National races.
The capture of the bomb yesterday morning on the road between Letterkenny and Derry by two alert traffic gardai who became suspicious of the Ford Escort estate, which turned out to have false registration plates, may have averted another serious attack on the political process in the North.
Garda Special Branch officers were last night trying to ascertain the identity of the group which was behind the intended bombing. The two Derry men detained were not well known to gardai and contacts were being made with the RUC in Derry to see what group they are affiliated to.
It is suspected that they are affiliated to the group known as the "Continuity" IRA. This group, the military wing of the splinter political party known as Republican Sinn Fein, has a presence in Derry and was responsible for a number of unsuccessful bomb attacks there between its emergence in early 1996 and 1998. Most of its members are dissident Provisional IRA members who left after the calling of the ceasefire. Derry is one of the few places in Northern Ireland where the "Continuity" group has a foothold, but even there it has probably only a few dozen members.
The "Continuity" IRA also has a number of leading figures in the south Donegal and north Leitrim area. The group mounted a number of bomb attacks in Northern Ireland from the Leitrim/Cavan area. In July 1996 it carried out a bomb attack on the Killyhevlin Hotel, outside Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh and in January 1998, on the River Club disco in Enniskillen. There were no injuries in either attack.
The "Continuity" group was severely hit by Garda operations and its leader, Michael Hegarty, a former Provisional IRA member and ardchomhairle member of Republican Sinn Fein, was arrested and is serving a 10-year sentence for possessing a bomb found at Inniskeen, Co Monaghan.
In the past year several figures who were associated with the "Continuity" IRA again defected to the group calling itself the "Real" IRA, which went on to carry out a series of attacks in the North culminating in the Omagh atrocity on August 15th last.
After the Omagh bombing the "Real" IRA, which was largely based in the south Armagh-north Louth area, came under pressure both from the security forces on both sides of the Border and from the Provisional IRA, which saw it as posing a threat to its own position.
In response to this pressure and in the face of massive public revulsion, the "Real" IRA called a ceasefire, leaving the "Continuity" IRA as the only remaining republican group not to have called a cessation to its activities.
While there were no definite details of the intentions of the bombers intercepted in Donegal, gardai agreed that it was likely the device was being put in place to cause damage to the political process in the North or to attack the Orange Order's "Long March", which started yesterday in Derry.