The World - News from Feb. 12, 1989

The outlawed Irish Republican Army, despite being under pressure from its backers to stop maiming innocent civilians, claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that seriously injured a Roman Catholic man who had no ties to British security forces. The bombing in Belfast came only a few days after a meeting at which the head of Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the IRA, called for care when picking targets following a string of incidents in which civilians were accidentally maimed or killed. The IRA, which is fighting to oust the British from Northern Ireland, said in a statement that it had planted the bomb that nearly killed the factory safety officer.