Current+news+on+Ireland

Recent items in the news about Northern Ireland These are links to ongoing feeds about Northern Ireland. []

[]

[]

=Northern Ireland police say 650 republican terrorists are at large= Police Federation for Northern Ireland chairman says there have been 200 gun and bomb attacks against officers since last yea Police say governments at Westminster and Stormont (pictured) should not underestimate the scale of the threat. Photograph: Peter Morrison/AP There are around 650 active dissident republican terrorists determined to destroy [|Northern Ireland]'s power-sharing settlement, [|police] officers warned on Wednesday. The numbers from the Police Federation for Northern Ireland (PFNI) are the first hard figures on the size of the anti-ceasefire republican movements to be released in recent years. Over recent months there has been an upsurge in violence from the Real IRA, Continuity IRA and Oghlaigh naEireann – the three groups opposed to the peace process. In April a faction of the Real IRA in Co Tyrone said they carried out a car bomb attack [|that killed Constable Ronan Kerr]in Omagh. Terry Spence, the chairman of the PFNI, said governments both at Westminster and Stormont should stop underestimating the scale of the dissident threat. Spence said it was "common knowledge that they number around 650 – hardly the microscopic numbers officially suggested in official circles". He revealed that since last year there have been 200 gun and bomb attacks against his officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Addressing the Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson, Matt Baggot, the PSNI chief constable, and the Stormont justice minister, David Ford, as well as his delegates, Spence said: "Let me be absolutely clear. The Police Federation for Northern Ireland is frustrated at the seeming unwillingness of the executive and the PSNI to face up to the fact that we need to bring every resource that can be made available to us to bring the growing terrorist threat to an end." He also singled out the Garda Síochána for praise in countering the dissident republican threat from across the border. "Thanks to their magnificent efforts over 170 people from both sides of the border have been arrested for terrorist offences over the past 12 months. Last weekend's explosives discovery in Louth was a particular example of their good work." Two men in their 50s were arrested last weekend after a police raid on a farm house close to the border with Northern Ireland. Detectives found parts for a mortar bomb launcher and a significant quantity of home made explosives. The Garda later said they believed they had foiled a major terrorist attack being planned for somewhere across the border. But in Northern Ireland, Spence said the authorities had been "blindsided by the growth in terrorism" both republican and loyalist. Referring to the recent attacks by a unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force on a Catholic community in east Belfast, Spence said more robust action needed to be taken against those loyalists still engaged in violence. "If being a proscribed organisation is to mean anything then action must be taken. The behaviour of the UVF demands that active members released under the Belfast Agreement on license should be recalled to prison by the secretary of state. "We cannot tolerate paramilitary groups creating public havoc because they think they have no voice in how Northern Ireland is governed. "They have exactly the same access to the ballot box and opportunity to stand for election as the rest of us." The secretary of state retains the power to re-arrest and imprison any of the paramilitary prisoners who were freed early as part of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. During two nights of disturbances last week the UVF attacked police lines as well as residents' homes in the Catholic Short Strand district of east Belfast. Dissident republicans also opened fire towards the loyalist side and wounded the Press Asociation's photographer Niall Carson. On Friday night several thousand loyalists will march in the same area where trouble erupted last week during an Orange Order band parade around east Belfast. Security forces will be on alert in case there is any repeat of last week's sectarian disorder.
 * [|Henry McDonald], Ireland correspondent
 * [|guardian.co.uk],Wednesday 29 June 2011 13.01 BST
 * [|Article history]