INLA group thought to be behind bomb

THE INLA faction which killed nine year old Barbara McAlorum is believed to have been responsible for an attempt to kill her father outside Maghaberry Prison yesterday afternoon.

British army bomb disposal experts were summoned to the prison, on the outskirts of Lisburn, to defuse a bomb found under Mr Kevin McAlorum's car in the visitors' car park.

Mr McAlorum was visiting his son, also called Kevin, who is accused of attempting to murder two men in an attack linked to the split in the INLA.

Mr McAlorum said last night he now intended to go into hiding and that he had been previously threatened by the IRA. However, it seemed more likely that yesterday's bomb was the work of associate's of INLA leader Gino Gallagher, who was killed by another INLA faction last January.

Yesterday's incident came two days after Mr Joe Keenan, a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the INLA's political wing, was seriously wounded in an attack believed to have been carried out by the INLA "GHQ" group, the faction which killed Gino Gallagher.

The killing of Mr Gallagher escalated the dispute between the two sides. In early March, the INLA killed John Fennell, a member of the GHQ group. Later in the month it killed Barbara McAlorum as she played in her Belfast home.

The prison was closed to visitors for a number of hours yesterday as the British army carried out a controlled explosion on Mr McAlorum's car.