Man brings a pipe bomb into Cork garda station in pram

Gardaí in Cork were forced to evacuate a station in the city this morning (Monday) to allow an army bomb disposal team make safe a pipe bomb, which was brought to the station by a member of the public.

The man brought the pipe bomb to Togher Garda station in a pram after he found the device at the rear of his house on Plunkett Road in the nearby suburb of Ballyphehane at about 10am.

The man placed the device in a pram and wheeled it for several hundred metres from his home garda station on Tramore Road.

Gardaí immediately recognised the device as a pipe bomb and evacuated the station before contacting the army bomb disposal team from Collins Barracks to make safe the device.

Gardaí do not believe that the man who found the pipe bomb was the intended target of the attack and it may have been intended for another family living in the area.

They are investigating whether it might have been linked to a petrol bomb attack on a house in Blackwater Grove in Togher late last Friday night.

The petrol bomb failed to ignite when it was thrown at the door of the house and garda technical experts later carried out a forensic examination of the remains of the device.

A woman in her late 50s was alone in the house at the time and was uninjured but was said to be shaken by the attack, which gardaí believe is linked to a feud between two families.

The feud has already resulted in the death of one man from one family while two members of the other family are serving sentences for feud related violence.

One line of inquiry which gardaí are pursuing in their investigation into the pipe bomb incident is whether it may have been in retaliation for the petrol bomb attack.

Gardaí have begun door to door inquiries in the Ballyphehane area to see if anyone saw any suspicious activity last night or this morning near where the pipe bomb was found.

Army bomb disposal experts have made safe a pipe bomb today.