Frantic Cops Hunt IRA Bomb

Police from both sides of border team to find 300-lb. device

By Jason Farago, Newser Staff

Posted Mar 12, 2009 9:22 AM CDT

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Frantic Cops Hunt IRA Bomb — A Police Service of Northern Ireland officer salutes the coffin of Constable Stephen Paul Carroll, as it arrives at his home in Banbridge, Wednesday, March, 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

Security forces from both sides of the Irish border are scrambling to find a 300-pound bomb that the Real IRA may have smuggled from the Republic into Northern Ireland. A telephone call alerted authorities that the device was intended for an army barracks. Belfast was also on alert after a device that turned out to be a "sophisticated hoax" was discovered, reports the Telegraph.

"The red light went up on Monday and there is a panic on that the next thing to happen is a bomb somewhere in the north," said one Northern Irish security officer. The tip-off came on Monday, after the murder of two soldiers in Antrim but before the shooting of a police officer later that day.
(More Northern Ireland stories.)

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