A mortar-type device left in a graveyard in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland this weekend was an attempt to kill police officers, a police commander has said.
Pensioners living near the cemetery were evacuated in the middle of the night as security officials were alerted to the discovery of a motor bomb on Saturday in Strabane.
Searches had begun in the early hours of Saturday morning and ended on Sunday at 8.30pm.
Supt Mark McEwan, the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s district commander, said in a statement: “We received information about a bomb of some sort just after midnight on Friday. This bomb was placed in a graveyard and positioned where it could be used to attack passing police patrols. The bomb was left with the intent to kill police officers. It could have killed anyone passing by.”
He added: “There was a complete disregard for the community. Anyone with information should come forward.No one has claimed responsibility. One line of inquiry is violent dissident republican activity.”
Mark Lindsay, the chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, condemned those behind the bomb. In a statement, he said: “I wish to condemn the actions of misguided people who think that what they did in Strabane would serve to advance their aims. Such attempts at murder have never, and will never, progress any political objective.
“People want to get on with their lives without a threat to life or wholesale disruption to a community,” he added. “Like the officers who dealt with this alert, residents want nothing more than a normal, peaceful society free from the tyranny that is the only thing those responsible for this thwarted attack have to offer.”
Theresa Villiers, the Northern Ireland secretary, condemned those behind the incident and said “terrorists will never succeed”.
“The fact that those responsible were prepared to use a graveyard shows once again the contempt in which they hold the community,” she added.
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