No Injuries as Bomb Rattles Jittery Londoners

An explosion outside a cemetery rocked central London early today, adding to bomb jitters in the wake of two deadly IRA blasts last month but causing no injuries.

The blast broke windows and damaged nearby homes in the popular section of the city between Earl’s Court and South Kensington. Police immediately cordoned off a large area around the site.

Scotland Yard said it appeared that a bomb had exploded inside a trash can outside the Brompton Cemetery and not far from the West Brompton subway station in Earl’s Court.

There were few passersby in the area on a cold, wet night, and police said they were satisfied that no other devices had been planted nearby.

The explosion did not fit the pattern of attacks by the Irish Republican Army because there was no advance warning.

Shaken by two bombings last month, London has been braced for more violence after the IRA’s chilly reaction to a fresh Anglo-Irish peace initiative and calls for a restored cease-fire.

February’s bombs, which killed three people and wounded dozens, marked the end of a 17-month cease-fire by the IRA, which is protesting what it calls British intransigence in the search for peace in Northern Ireland.

Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm, said Thursday that the Irish nationalists want negotiations but are prepared for “another 25 years of war” if necessary.

Neither Sinn Fein nor the IRA has said definitively whether the guerrillas will renew a cease-fire as their admission ticket to all-party peace talks summoned by Britain and Ireland and scheduled to begin June 10.

More than 3,000 people died in the IRA-driven violence between 1969 and 1994 in the IRA’s search to break away the six Protestant-majority northern counties of Ireland from British rule.