Seizure of missiles thwarted deadly attack

Armed police seized four mortar bombs just minutes before dissident republicans planned to blitz Londonderry’s main police station.

Officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland rammed a Citroen Berlingo van which had been heading for the Strand Road HQ a mile away loaded with four primed home-made missiles ready to be launched through a roof which had been cut open.

Police chiefs admitted the terrorists came dangerously close to inflicting massive casualties.

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Chief Superintendent Stephen Cargin said: “There is no doubt about their intention. They were intent to kill and cause maximum police fatalities.”

Three men, all known to police in Derry – this year’s UK City of Culture – were arrested.

One had been driving the van. A second had been following behind on a motorcycle and the third was detained two hours later in the city’s Creggan estate. Two are aged 37, the third 35.

Officers had mounted a major surveillance operation and tailed the Dublin-registered van on the Letterkenny Road before moving in to intercept it in the Brandywell district on Sunday night.

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More than 100 homes were evacuated and families moved out while army explosives experts examined the mortars.

The devices had been recently constructed and were similar in design to the type of bombs manufactured and used with devastating effect by the Provisional IRA before they called a halt to their terrorist campaign in July 2005.

Nine officers were killed when a police station in Newry, Co Down, was hit in a missile attack in February 1985.

Mr Cargin, the district commander in Derry, said many civilians could also have died had the attack not been foiled – not just in flats and houses in close to the station at Strand Road, but as the bombs were being transported through heavily built-up urban areas.

Mr Cargin said: “This was a risky, risky operation.

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“Those mortars could have gone off at any time, and even if they (the terrorists) had reached the intended target there was no guarantee they would have hit it, because these mortars are so unreliable.

“Can you imagine what the outcome would have been had they landed nearby, on a gas tank or a petrol tank? It does not bear thinking about.”

Dissident republicans blasted the Strand Road police station with a 400lb car bomb in August 2011. No one was hurt and even though there have been several attacks on property in the city centre since then, this is their principal target in Derry.

Republicans suspected of supporting or being involved in acts of violence are under constant police surveillance in Derry amid fears the dissidents are intent on disrupting the UK City of Culture programme.