A fresh upsurge of dissident republican violence in Northern Ireland was orchestrated by a new nucleus of former IRA members who have defected from the Provisionals. Veterans of the Provisional IRA’s North Armagh brigade were behind the 24-hour wave of shootings, blast bomb attacks and riots that rocked the Craigavon area at the beginning of last week.
Senior security sources in Northern Ireland pointed this weekend to a small but dedicated number of former North Armagh brigade republicans who they say pose a major threat to the peace process.
“They include one ex-prisoner who served life for murder and another responsible for a series of assassinations around North Armagh,” one police officer said this weekend. “This core cannot be dismissed as amateurs or newcomers to the dissident scene. They have experience and a track record behind them which makes them good recruiting sergeants for kids around them.”
The violence in Craigavon means that in almost every corner of Northern Ireland there have been short outbursts of dissident terrorist activity over the last six months. Last month, dissidents linked to a Continuity IRA unit fired an improvised rocket at a mobile patrol.
Although no one was killed or injured, the attack was significant because it was the first time the dissidents had used semtex to set off a rocket-propelled grenade. Until then, it appeared that the dissident groups did not have access to the Czech-made plastic explosive, which the Provisional IRA was meant to have destroyed in the arms decommissioning process two years ago.
Its presence is an indication that some of that explosive was taken from Provisional IRA stashes and given to dissidents.
Attacks have taken place in Derry, Tyrone, Fermanagh and now Armagh. Significantly, none of the republican groups opposed to the power-sharing government between Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists — the Real IRA, Continuity IRA or a new group known as Oglaigh na hEireann — have mounted any major attacks in the Belfast area.
Police patrols came under fire from a sniper, two blast bombs were thrown and police vehicles were attacked with petrol bombs and stones during 24 hours of disturbances in the Tullygally and Drumbeg areas of Armagh.
By the end of last week, some calm had been restored to the nationalist districts, although residents said there had been heavy-handed police raids on homes.
Graffiti on walls and bus shelters warns of more violence. One even warned that anyone cooperating with police probes into the disturbances would be shot.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS