IRA dissidents burn cars, block Belfast roads

DUBLIN – Suspected IRA dissidents and their supporters hijacked cars Monday in working-class Catholic areas of Northern Ireland in a coordinated effort to block roads and threaten police stations, police said.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was receiving a wave of reports of vehicles being hijacked by masked gunmen in several parts of Belfast and in the Kilwilkie district of Lurgan, a power base for Irish Republican Army dissidents southwest of Belfast.
Some vehicles were being set on fire in roads to disrupt traffic at rush hour, while others were abandoned near four Belfast police stations and on Northern Ireland's major motorway near Lurgan.
Police said they were treating all the abandoned vehicles as potential car bombs, although they cautioned this was unlikely. They urged motorists to avoid Kilwilkie and parts of Catholic west Belfast entirely.
Monday's upheaval came at the end of a month in which IRA dissidents shot to death two soldiers and a policeman — the first killings of British security forces since 1998, the year of Northern Ireland's peace accord.
Police said at least two cars were hijacked in Lurgan's Kilwilkie district, the power base of suspected IRA dissident Colin Duffy. Duffy, 41, was charged last week with murdering the two soldiers.
One of the hijacked cars was abandoned on the M1 motorway, which connects Belfast to Dublin, 100 miles (160 kilometers) to the south. Authorities shut part of the motorway as a precaution.
One abandoned vehicle — which police said did not contain a bomb — was left near the Stormont Parliamentary Building, the center of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government between the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority.
The coalition's Protestant leader, First Minister Peter Robinson, said the rising dissident IRA threat would not spur Protestants to sever links with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents most Catholics today.
"The criminal terrorists responsible for the series of bomb scares and hijackings are beneath contempt and have no support whatsoever in the community," Robinson said.
The hijackings and security alerts also coincided with a widespread breakdown of Belfast's traffic lights system. Police in a statement called that an "unfortunate coincidence."

N. Ireland police re-arm after killings

BELFAST (AFP) – Police in parts of Northern Ireland have begun wearing flak jackets and carrying rifles for the first time in years following three high-profile killings, they said Sunday.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has returned to arming some of its officers after the fatal shootings of two British soldiers and a police officer within 48 hours of each other in early March.
"Regional commanders will decide where it is appropriate to advise patrols to carry Heckler and Koch rifles," a police spokeswoman said.
One member of a PSNI mobile patrol unit on the Foyle Bridge in Londonderry, an area northwest of the province near the border with the Republic of Ireland, said the practice had become common there.
"All patrols carrying out checkpoints like these in the city of Londonderry have at least one officer armed with a rifle and we are wearing flak jackets," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He added: "After the killings in Masserene (army barracks) and in Lurgan, we were told to start carrying these weapons."
The PSNI spokeswoman confirmed officers have to undergo "specialist training" to use the rifles, explaining: "No officers passing out (qualifying) in the past two years would have been trained in the use of those weapons."
Police are being re-armed only in certain areas, including Lurgan where constable Stephen Carroll was shot dead on March 9.
After the killings, Northern Ireland assembly member Ian Paisley, the son of former first minister Ian Paisley, expressed concern about a shortage of flak jackets for police officers.
"At this time of increased terrorist criminal threat it is vital that our officers feel safe and secure as they serve the community," he said.
Civil strife between the largely Catholic and Protestant communities in the British-ruled province raged for three decades before 1998 peace accords led to power-sharing.
The recent murders were claimed by dissident republicans who reject the peace process and want a united Ireland.
On Saturday, violent clashes also kicked off between rival fans attending a Northern Ireland-Poland football match in Belfast. Four men have been charged with disorderly behaviour in connection with the disturbances. There is a lot of history on the rival "fans" that many don't know about. They are more like gangs then fans. Enough said for now.
(my post on yahoo)