Warning of IRA Bus Bomb Allows 300 Families to Flee

BELFAST, Northern Ireland â€”  Irish Republican Army guerrillas held a man’s family hostage Tuesday and forced him to drive a bomb-laden school minibus to a police station, where he leaped out and shouted a warning 20 minutes before the vehicle exploded and caused widespread damage, police said.

In those few minutes, police evacuated 300 families near the west Belfast station. A policeman and six civilians suffered minor injuries and were released after treatment at a hospital.

“These people are inhuman,� a police spokesman said of the IRA. “It was a callous act to leave such a parcel of death on the doorsteps of so many innocent people. It was a miracle nobody was killed.�

The attack appeared to be part of a Christmas season bombing campaign by the outlawed IRA, which is seeking to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Irish Republic.

The bomb, estimated at 800 pounds, wrecked the station and an adjoining church and tore off nearby roofs, police said. More than 600 homes were damaged, officials said.

Billy Waring, 65, who is partially deaf, said he was in bed only yards from the station when the bomb went off.

“The ceiling came in around me, and I was covered in grit and dust. Most of my windows were broken,� he said. Many elderly people live in the district, Waring said, “and many like myself didn’t hear the doorbell when the police raised the alarm.�

The explosion, which was heard more than 10 miles away, severed gas and electric lines. Firefighters battled a gas-main fire next to the station.

The IRA, in a message to news organizations, said it carried out the early morning attack. The day before, police had issued a warning, citing the recent discoveries of large numbers of bombs in Ireland and Ulster.

Belfast police Sgt. Michael Glover said the guerrillas first took family members of the unidentified driver hostage and threatened to kill them.

Glover said some of the guerrillas and their captives were believed to have followed the bus in a car, and the hostages were released unharmed after the explosion.

Car Blown Up

The car was found abandoned in a nearby street and was blown up by security forces who feared it was booby-trapped, he said.

On Saturday, police found a 1,200-pound bomb in the back of a van stopped at a checkpoint outside Newry, a town near the Irish Republic’s border. It was one of the biggest bombs ever uncovered in the province in 17 years of violence.

Last week, police in the Irish Republic found 25 primed bombs in County Monaghan near the border with Northern Ireland.

On Friday, a workman was killed when an IRA bomb planted in a truck he was repairing exploded at a creamery near the border village of Castlederg in County Tyrone.