Police seizure of bombs foils dissident republicans

Police in Northern Ireland said yesterday that they had scored a major success against dissident republicans by seizing two booby-trap bombs and arresting two men.

The foiled terrorist operation is believed to have involved the Real IRA, which claimed 29 lives when it bombed the Co Tyrone town of Omagh in 1998. The two suspected dissident republicans were arrested on Tuesday night when a large force of police intercepted a car near the town of Newry. The two booby-traps were discovered in a second car a quarter of a mile away.

The bombs were designed to be placed underneath vehicles. The new Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde, said: "Lives have been saved."

Mr Orde, who has held the post for just weeks, said: "The dissident threat was extremely high when I took over this job and this is more evidence to support that assessment.

"People in Northern Ireland do have to realise that as long as we have to deal with this sort of activity and the street violence that has taken place on the streets of Belfast, the more stretched we are in trying to deal with ordinary crime."

In August a Real IRA bomb hidden in a lunchbox killed a workman on military premises in Londonderry. Earlier, a booby-trap device was placed under a vehicle used by a Catholic police recruit. No one was killed but the incident is said to have reduced the number of Catholics applying to the police.

Although a substantial number of dissident republicans have been jailed or are awaiting trial, the organisation has maintained a sporadic campaign in Northern Ireland and, more rarely, in Britain.

The most recent interception is the latest in a series of police successes over the years against the Real IRA, which have on a number of occasions resulted in arrests while bombs are in transit.

Only last week a dissident republican was jailed for 14 years in Belfast after pleading guilty to transporting a 200lb car bomb in Co Armagh last November. He was caught red-handed with the device – when arrested at a police check point he was wearing body armour and surgical gloves, and had a two-way radio.

* John Reid, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, announced yesterday the appointment of an independent monitor to examine the level of violence in Northern Ireland and the nature of paramilitary involvement in it.

The monitor, who has yet to be named, would bring greater transparency to patterns of violence and the role of loyalists and republican paramilitaries in it, Mr Reid said.

The Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, who met Tony Blair yesterday for talks at Downing Street, dismissed the new post as an irrelevant distraction, claiming that it was designed as a concession to the Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble.

The idea began life as a post whose holder would make judgements on the state of paramilitary ceasefires in Northern Ireland but has since been much diluted. Mr Reid said: "I am not interested in a short-term headline or a celebrity or a star in order to score a few points. What I am interested in is someone who can do that job of giving confidence, of giving clarity to the people of Northern Ireland on the level of violence."