British police said on Thursday they had found a bomb attached to a truck in Northern Ireland after being alerted to the presence of a car bomb on a ferry on Brexit night, accusing "dissident Republicans".
In a statement, police in Northern Ireland said they had received reports on January 31 that an explosive device had been placed in a truck due to travel by ferry the same evening between the British province and Scotland. Excavations had then yielded nothing and it was finally several days later, in an industrial area of Northern Ireland, about forty kilometers west of Belfast, that an explosive device was found attached to a truck, thanks to new information, according to the same source.
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"The information available to the police clearly shows that dissident Republicans deliberately (...) attached an explosive device to a goods truck knowing full well that it would put the driver, motorists and the public at risk of injury or dead, " said police.
For three decades, nationalist Republicans, mainly Catholics, and Unionists, mainly Protestants, who supported the maintenance of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, clashed during "Troubles" also involving the British army, which left 3,500 dead. The Good Friday Peace Agreement ended it in 1998, establishing executive power sharing and an open border with Ireland, the maintenance of which was a crucial issue in the Brexit negotiations.
The level of threat linked to terrorism in Northern Ireland has been described as "serious" by the authorities, which means that an attack is considered "highly probable" . Last April, a 29-year-old journalist was shot dead in clashes in Londonderry, on the Irish border. The New IRA, a dissident republican group fighting for the reunification of Ireland, had admitted its responsibility.
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