London Police Seize Truck and Ton of IRA Explosives

A policeman was shot early Saturday as he tried to arrest two men after stopping a truck that was loaded with 2,000 pounds of explosives, officials said.

Police said the explosives apparently were being transported by Irish Republican Army members who had hoped to set them off in central London.

“There was a vast amount which could have done untold damage,” a spokesman for Scotland Yard said.

In Belfast, Northern Ireland, two Roman Catholics were killed and 13 wounded Saturday when the pro-British Ulster Freedom Fighters attacked a betting shop with a machine gun and grenades.

The group said the attack was revenge for a bombing by the Irish Republican Army that hurt three the night before in Coleraine, a predominantly Protestant town.

The IRA is waging a terrorist campaign aimed at forcing the government to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Its latest series of bombings, which began in London on Oct. 7, has killed one man and injured several others.

In Saturday’s incident, Police Constable Ray Hall, 36, and another officer had stopped a truck in a routine vehicle check when the driver and a passenger leaped out of the cab and fled on foot.

The officers chased the men and cornered them in a nearby garden, where the suspects pulled guns and shot Hall in the head and neck. Hall was hospitalized in satisfactory condition.

One of the suspects was captured and is being questioned; the second man escaped.

About 30 people were evacuated from the area, police said.

Police said the explosives were to be used in a single bomb. They were said to be fertilizer-based, of the type frequently fashioned by the IRA in Northern Ireland.