IRA Attacks Police Minutes After Christmas Truce Ends in N. Ireland

Sixteen minutes after a three-day Christmas truce ended Monday, the IRA launched a mortar attack on a rural police station that injured two civilians.

The attack at Fintona, 60 miles west of Belfast, was the first raid by the IRA since it tried to blow up a British army patrol a week ago, injuring one soldier.

Police said a gunman in a car later Monday fired on a British military lookout post but injured no one.

The attacks defied a plea by British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd for the Irish Republican Army to end its 25-year war against British rule of Northern Ireland and win a place at new talks under an Anglo-Irish peace initiative Dec. 15.

Hurd warned of a security crackdown if the guerrilla group failed to endorse the peace plan.

“If you are not going to do that at the present time, then security measures against you will be intensified and you can expect no letup on that front,” he told the British Broadcasting Corp. in an interview recorded last week.

It was the clearest signal yet that the British government plans stiffer security measures if the IRA rejects the plan unveiled by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds.

Hurd did not specify what extra security measures might be taken by the 18,000 troops and 12,000 armed police already operating throughout Ulster, as the province is also known.

Hurd said that Britain and Ireland are united in rejecting demands by the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, for talks on the initiative and said negotiations could only follow a permanent end to violence.