POLICE BELIEVE that dissident republicans who are suspected of orchestrating a series of disruptive incidents in different parts of Northern Ireland over recent days are working to a number of aims, including attempting to provoke violent loyalist reaction.
There were more hoax security alerts in Belfast, Fermanagh and north Down yesterday. They followed the dozens of hijackings and hoax bomb alerts, mainly in Belfast, over Monday and Tuesday.
On Tuesday night petrol bombs were thrown at the Orange Hall at Clifton Street near Carlisle Circus in north Belfast. The attack happened while 50 Orangemen were inside. No one was injured.
The main road from Newtownbutler, Co Fermanagh, to Clones, Co Monaghan, was closed yesterday because of a warning of a dissident republican bomb. This was eventually declared a hoax.
British army bomb disposal experts were called out to deal with a suspicious object found at a petrol station in west Belfast late on Tuesday night. A number of families were forced to leave their homes during the alert. The device was also declared a hoax as was an object discovered at Balloo Avenue in Bangor, Co Down.
PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde will today update the policing board on the extent of the threat from dissident republicans, following the murders of British soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey and PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll, and following the recent series of mainly hoax bomb alerts.
Part of the ambitions of dissident groups appears to be to provoke a reaction from loyalist paramilitaries, according to security sources.
“Police are also conscious that they might be trying to lure police into further ambushes,” said one source. “Part of their planning might also be to ‘blood’ new recruits and to try to create an impression that they have some public support, when all the evidence is that they haven’t.”
All the incidents have been condemned by mainstream politicians in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin Assembly member for North Belfast Caral Ní Chuilín said the attack on the Orange hall was a case of “blatant sectarianism”.
“Those behind the attack need to realise there is no support whatsoever for this kind of activity from our communities,” she added.
DUP deputy leader Nigel Dodds said the attack was “designed to raise tensions even further in a week when republicans have tried to hold communities in north Belfast to ransom with their hijackings and violence.
“Now it seems that the objective is to raise sectarian tension by attacking this major Orange Hall in the constituency.”
Those responsible should be ostracised and brought to justice, he added.
Describing the attack as “political vandalism” local SDLP MLA Alban Maginness said “these criminals will not be allowed to sabotage the agreed Ireland we have worked so hard to achieve”.
Alliance leader David Ford said the incidents would only strengthen people’s resolve to resist the dissidents.
“Northern Ireland has emerged from the past few weeks of turmoil more united than ever. Dissidents need to wake up and accept that they will not destabilise the community. They will not succeed,” he said.
