Bomb Explodes in London; IRA Splinter Group Blamed

Britain was on high alert Sunday after a powerful bomb exploded outside the British Broadcasting Corp.’s West London television headquarters in what police said was part of an ongoing campaign by dissident Irish republicans opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process.

The blast followed coded telephone warnings to a hospital and a charity. Police quickly evacuated the area and were trying to conduct a remote-controlled explosion when the bomb detonated, shooting an orange fireball into the night sky and rocking buildings for blocks around. One man was slightly injured by flying glass.

The attack was believed to be the work of an Irish Republican Army splinter group that calls itself the Real IRA and that was responsible for a 1998 bombing in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh. Twenty-nine people were killed in that attack--the worst in the province’s three decades of political violence.

The Real IRA has also been blamed for an audacious grenade attack in September on the headquarters of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, and for a handful of other attacks in London in recent months.

The mainstream IRA is engaged in a cease-fire and supports the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that its political wing, Sinn Fein, negotiated with the province’s other main Protestant and Roman Catholic parties.

But anti-terrorist police say the dissident ranks have been growing along with the delays in implementing the accord, and for several weeks Scotland Yard has been warning of stepped-up attacks.

“It is quite clear we are dealing with ruthless terrorists,” said Alan Fry, assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch. “We, unfortunately, are in a terrorist campaign. I fear that we will see more attacks in coming days and weeks.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair denounced the bombing as a “cowardly act” and said it would not impede the peace process.

“There are those outside the peace process who are set on trying to turn the clock back to the days before the Good Friday agreement,” Blair said in a statement.

The opposition Conservative Party, however, blamed the government for failing to secure IRA disarmament, saying some of the mainstream group’s weapons obviously had made it into the hands of dissidents. Pro-British Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland concurred, although Northern Ireland police say the dissidents are raising funds abroad and securing some of their own weapons and explosives.

“There is evidence of materiel and expertise which has leaked from the mainstream IRA to those who are engaged in these incidents,” Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble said, “which is why we continue to press for those [weapons] dumps to be put out of use permanently and in a way that it could never be used again.”

No group claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bombing, but Scotland Yard seemed to have little doubt who was behind it.

The bomb was planted in a London taxi that had been purchased from a used car lot Saturday morning by a man in his 30s who spoke with a Northern Ireland accent. He paid about $450 for the car, which was packed with 10 to 20 pounds of explosives on a timer and parked outside the BBC television center’s main entrance, on the wrong side of the road with its headlights on.

This, plus the telephone warnings, were meant to ensure that police had time to clear the area of people. The explosion was a publicity coup for the dissidents, as it was filmed by the BBC and displayed the perpetrators’ ability to operate in the heart of London.

Police said the BBC could have been targeted in retaliation for a hard-hitting report that its current-affairs program “Panorama” aired last year naming Real IRA suspects in the Omagh bombing.

Northern Ireland political leaders say the Real IRA also has been trying to pull off a spectacular attack ahead of upcoming British parliamentary elections, which the government had been expected to call for May 3. With the recent nationwide outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, a fast-spreading livestock virus, that date is now in doubt.

Dissident IRA attacks feed skepticism about the peace process in Northern Ireland and could bolster the showing of parties opposed to the peace accord. The Real IRA wants to keep on fighting to evict the British from Northern Ireland and unite the province with the Irish Republic.

Many Protestants, meanwhile, are angry over the IRA’s refusal to destroy its weapons, now supposedly locked away. Some do not believe the IRA split is real and say the republicans are trying to have it both ways, with Sinn Fein participating in local government and democratic politics while the gunmen set off bombs.

Fewer than 12 hours after the BBC bombing, the area around Victoria Station was cordoned off for about 90 minutes after police spotted another suspicious vehicle. The bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion, but no explosive device was found.