'Continuity IRA' claim responsibility for Fermanagh blast

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday July 25, 2002 17:20 by McMean

Dissident republicans have claimed responsibility for an explosion close to the County Fermanagh estate of Unionist peer Lord Brookeborough on Tuesday night. The so called "Continuity IRA" said it set off a bomb at Colebrooke following reports of a loud explosion during the night.

Viscount Brookeborough was not on the estate last night but his
mother said the blast had been on a road outside the estate and
near a church. No one had been injured, she said.

A County Fermanagh newspaper received a call, accompanied by a
recognised code word, claiming to be from the Continuity IRA and
saying it had made the attack.

The republican group has rarely been active in the past couple of
years but, when it is, tends to launch attacks in Fermanagh.

Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness today called on all dissident
republican groups to cease activity.

"My message to them is they should stop," he said." They are not
doing the Catholic, nationalist or republican community any
favours whatsoever by the actions that they engage in.

"What they effectively do is empower those militarists within the
British establishment and empower those unionists who are opposed
to the [1998 Good Friday Agreement] to set about their dirty work
the killing of Catholics in Belfast, and the type of incident we
saw in Newcastle in Co Down when two priests were almost burnt in
their beds."

The Mid-Ulster MP was speaking at a press conference today on the
tally of sectarian attacks against Catholics across the North in
the last three months, where he also called for a meeting with
senior loyalists, including notorious Ulster Freedom Fighters
leader Johnny Adair.

The North's Education Minister said the only way to stop the
cycle of sectarian violence currently engulfing the province was
for all sides to engage in dialogue.

He said: "I would love to meet with the Loyalist Commission and I
would be prepared to meet with Johnny Adair and I would be
prepared to meet with the UDA in the Shankill Road.

"Because I think all of them need to get the message that
whatever they think they can achieve in terms of continuing
attacks on the Catholic community, in reality, sectarianism is
the road to nowhere and it is as damaging to them who inflict
sectarian murder on the Catholic community as it is to the
Catholic community itself."