February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Chris Thornton
BELFAST — A bomb attack on a British army base outside Derry Friday has been blamed on republican dissidents opposed to the IRA cease-fire.
The dissidents, apparently encouraged by the ongoing political crisis in the North, are believed to have left the 15-pound bomb near a dormitory at Shackleton barracks in Ballykelly.
The Continuity IRA claimed the attack, which failed when the bomb’s detonator failed to set off the main charge. But Garda sources have also linked the Real IRA to the incident.
The Real IRA has been on cease-fire since shortly after it killed 29 people in the August 1998 bombing in Omagh, Co. Tyrone. Garda sources have predicted for some time that the group would renew it bombing campaign in protest of the Good Friday peace agreement.
The attack came the day before Republican Sinn Fein, a breakaway political party linked to the Continuity IRA by security forces on both sides of the border, opened its first offices in the North on the Falls Road in Belfast. The party, which split from Sinn Fein in 1986, said it is in "a battle for the hearts and minds of the people" within the mainstream republican movement.
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At the opening ceremony, Republican Sinn Fein president Ruairi O Bradaigh denied any connection to the Continuity IRA, but added: ”We uphold the right of the Irish to engage in controlled and disciplined force against British rule."