Dissidents moving bombs to Belfast

Dissident republicans based in the border areas of south Armagh and north Louth are delivering ready-made bombs to Belfast for spectacular attacks on big targets – including Palace Barracks and Policing Board Headquarters.

A senior security source, speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, described those border regions as “the crucible” of dissident engineering activity – meaning their bomb making.

And, with the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) preparing its latest report, the threat level is now at its highest since the Real IRA bombing campaign of 1998, which ended in the massacre of civilians in Omagh.

“It feels to us, just looking at it in every way, that this has picked up in terms of intensity and severity,” the source said – adding the threat assessment “remains very properly at severe”.

According to the well-placed source, intelligence assessments show “increased communication leading to increased cooperation” among the different dissident groups, principally the two factions of the Real IRA.

“They probably still see themselves as two distinct organisations – both numerically strong, and they have people there who undoubtedly now have developed technical capabilities around improvised explosive devices, of nearly all types,” the senior source told this newspaper.

“The main conversation is (between) the two factions – the two elements – of RIRA, which is something you wouldn’t have seen maybe a year and a half ago,” he said.

And the big security concern, after a series of failed attacks, is the obvious recent advance in the dissident bomb-making capability.

He revealed that the bomb used in the recent attack on Palace Barracks, which houses the Northern Ireland Headquarters of MI5, contained between 50/60 kilos of homemade explosives packed inside a beer barrel.

It was delivered from the border to Belfast as a “complete device” – ready for use.

The bomb at the Policing Board was much bigger – contained in a large oil drum – but only partially detonated.

“There are a number of people with the (bomb making) skills,” the source said.

“We really have to work on the assumption that there is more than one person able to do this.

“You can be trained up to do this or else you can draw on the older skills.

“So, we have to work through both those investigative possibilities – i.e. is this new staff who have been trained up, or is this older hands who are applying what they were doing twenty years ago?

“Undoubtedly there are former IRA people who are deeply embedded in these (dissident) organisations,” the source said.

Belfast Telegraph