Northern Irish police have made an arrest after the nationalist group New IRA claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a Belfast police station.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland on Tuesday said a 66-year-old man was arrested under the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act and searches were ongoing in both east and west of Belfast. Sectarian pressures have been building recently in the UK-controlled territory, 28 years after political agreement put an end to decades of violence.
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No one was injured in the blast on Saturday, which occurred after a delivery vehicle was hijacked and the driver forced to drive to Dunmurry police station on Saturday.
The New IRA declared on Tuesday that it had intended to kill police coming out of the station, according to local outlet Irish News, and warned that it planned to target officers at their homes with bombs.
The New IRA typically claims responsibility for attacks in coded statements to local newspapers.
Assistant Chief Constable Davy Beck said that the latest attack demonstrated a clear intent to disrupt communities and potentially injure or kill police officers and staff, according to the Reuters news agency.
The New IRA is one of a small number of active armed groups that oppose a three-decade-old peace deal that largely ended sectarian violence in the northern part of the island.
The dissident group rejects the political compromises at the heart of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that stipulates Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom unless a majority votes by referendum to unite with the Republic of Ireland.
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The group has been behind a mounting series of attacks on police, including a similar attempted car bombing at a police station outside Belfast last month.
The targeting of police officers at their homes would be an escalation. The last officer to be killed in Northern Ireland, Constable Ronan Kerr, died when a bomb exploded under his car outside his home 15 years ago.
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