On Sunday, five men were arrested after the explosion of a car bomb in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Now four of them are free again. But a 50-year-old suspect remains in custody, the Northern Irish police said PSNI. The men were arrested on suspicion of belonging to the militant group New IRA.
The bomb had detonated on Saturday night in the center of Londonderry in front of a court. No one was injured – probably because 15 minutes before the explosion, a warning had been received by the authorities and surrounding buildings were evacuated.
Video footage showed how dangerous the situation was: just a few minutes before the attack, a group of people passed the vehicle. On Monday, the robbery of two cars by armed and masked men put the police again on alert. One of the cars was blown up as a precaution.
The events in Londonderry recall those dark decades during which the IRA led a guerilla war against the British state and Protestant paramilitaries. It is unclear whether there is any connection with the ongoing Brexit negotiations. It is feared that the introduction of border controls between the Republic of Ireland, which continues to be a member of the EU, and Northern Ireland will re-launch the spiral of violence in the ex-civil war region.
In Northern Ireland, Irish Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists had fought for decades. 3,500 people died in the conflict. The city of Derry, which is called by the Protestants Londonderry, 1972 scene of the „Bloody Sunday“. At that time, British soldiers shot at unarmed participants in an unauthorized demonstration. 14 people were killed.
The Northern Ireland conflict was ended in 1998 by the Good Friday Agreement. It assures, among other things, a sharing of power between Protestants and Catholics. The IRA, which had for decades violently fought for a separation of Northern Ireland from Britain, swore the violence officially in 2005.
