Antrim - terror capital of Northern Ireland?
Thursday, 21 January 2010
St Comgall’s GAC players were forced to evacuate Stiles Community Centre on Thursday night after two pipe bombs were found outside the building.
ANTRIM has been thrust once more into the headlines this week after two 'crude' pipe bombs were left at Stiles Community Centre while a local Gaelic football club trained.
The sectarian attack on Thursday - almost exactly a week after Constable Peadar Heffron nearly lost his life in a dissident republican car bomb on the Milltown Road - is the third of its kind in Antrim in the last six months.
Pipe bombs left at Brantwood Gardens in the summer and at The Folly in October both targeted people affiliated with the GAA.
It was as St Comgall's GAC conducted their first indoor training session of the year at the Fountain Hill facility that a warning was sent to UTV saying the devices had been left.
The hall was evacuated and the PSNI conducted searches, eventually finding what the police called two 'non-viable' devices. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
As news of the attack spread, condemnation came from all sides of the community.
Mayor of Antrim, Adrian Watson, said that despite the devices being non-viable, those responsible had set out to cause serious injury or death. He also said the culprits were likely to be local.
“The attack on Massereene Barracks and that on Constable Heffron last week were probably assisted with some local intelligence, but the actual instigators were probably from outside the area," he said.
“However, I'm sorry to have to acknowledge that this attack is probably down to some local, misguided people.
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