Police Seize Explosives in N. Ireland Chase

Police said Friday that they believe they thwarted a major bomb attack when security forces discovered half a ton of homemade explosives in a fleeing van that crossed the border from Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic.

Northern Ireland’s police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, said the explosives were probably going to be assembled into a bomb by Irish Republican Army dissidents opposed to the British province’s peace process. They said the bomb was intended to go off in the center of Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second-biggest city, where a major Protestant march is scheduled today.

Police chased the van to the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland after it ran a police checkpoint in Londonderry. The driver escaped into the Irish Republic. Irish police were examining a second vehicle that was also found abandoned about five miles away.

No arrests have been made.

Up to 30,000 marchers are expected for the Apprentice Boys parade in Londonderry, a traditional source of tension in the majority Roman Catholic city.

The Irish Republican Army has previously bombed targets in the city on the eve of the Apprentice Boys march. The IRA has been upholding a cease-fire, but splinter groups opposed to the peace process have carried out several bombings and attempted bombings in Britain and Northern Ireland in recent months.

Elsewhere Friday, someone open fire on Belfast police called to investigate reports that an outlawed paramilitary organization was firing shots in an area west of the provincial capital.

There were no injuries, and no one was arrested.

Meanwhile, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, or UFF, said Friday that the group was reinstating a threat to kill Catholics who harass Protestant families.

Gerry Kelly, a Northern Ireland Assembly member from the IRA-linked party Sinn Fein, said the UFF had broken its cease-fire by vowing to kill Catholics. But John White, chairman of the UFF-linked Ulster Democratic Party, said the cease-fire was intact.

“What happened recently was a response to demands from people in the area for protection. It was a defense mechanism, not proactive in terms of creating conflict,” he said.