Real IRA stands up after car bomb goes off

Real IRA stands up after car bomb goes off
Agencies

LONDON, MAR 4; Londeners woke up on Sunday to the chilling news that the dissident group behind Northern Ireland's worst guerrilla bombing atrocity appeared to be back on the streets of the English capital.

Police suspect the Real IRA guerrilla group was behind a powerful explosion outside one of the main offices of British state broadcaster BBC in the early hours of Sunday.

Only one man was slightly injured after police were tipped off about the threat of a car bomb, giving the BBC time to evacuate employees from the building. A bomb disposal unit was attempting a controlled explosion of the device, hidden in a taxi, when it went off.

But while major casualties were avoided, the huge fireball set off by the explosives and caught dramatically on film will send a powerful signal to the public and politicians alike that threats from the Northern Irish conflict has not gone away.

While the main Irish Republican Army (IRA) has maintained a ceasefire in its campaign for independence for the province following a landmark 1998 Good Friday peace accord with the British authorities, the Real IRA has not.

The group of breakaway dissidents, which was formed in 1997, has opposed that ceasefire all along and police in mainstream Britain and Northern Ireland have been bracing themselves for further outbreaks of violence.

The Real IRA's name was indelibly seared on the public consciousness in 1998 when it claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that killed 29 civilians in the Northern Irish town of Omagh, the troubled province's worst-ever guerrilla bombing.

It is since said to have been involved in violent skirmishes with the mainstream IRA movement.

But it has also proved effective on the mainland.

Authorities on both sides of the Irish Sea believe that the Real IRA, which has weaponry smuggled from Croatia, has an "active service unit" in London that staged attacks on a river bridge and a rail track in the capital over last summer.

It has also been linked with a missile attack on the headquarters of the British government's external intelligence agency in central London last September.

While such actions have been seen by some as largely symbolic, "prestige" stunts, there are fears that lives on the mainland may be at risk.