Thaindian News

BELFAST (BNO NEWS) — Three children were injured by a bomb blast in County Armagh in Northern Ireland on Saturday, the bombing was blamed on dissident republicans who were trying to draw police forces out, the Guardian reported.

The bomb went off in a wheelie bin as police investigated reports that a bomb had been left in the town’s Model primary school. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is now investigating whether or not the bombing may have been dumped after a planned dissident republican attack was aborted, while also searching for a possible second device in the area.

Two children aged twelve and a three-year-old suffered minor cuts and scrapes when they were hit with flying debris after the bomb exploded in Lurgan. A spokesperson for the Social Democratic and Labour Party, one of two major Irish nationalist parties in Northern Ireland, Dolores Kelly, blamed the attacks on dissident republicans and described the action as despicable.

“A call came in to the Samaritans saying that a device had been placed near the Model school, but there was no mention of what town,” she said. “So police all over the north were checking around all Model schools when the bomb went off without further warning at Kilmaine Street, just where the police would’ve put a cordon around the school.”

She continued, saying it was a ploy to draw police and other innocents out, and bomb the area where police would be trying to keep people safe. Kelly said that this is the reason the children were injured.

The explosion follows a number of failed attacks by dissident republicans against members of the security forces. The Provisional Irish Republican Army effectively disarmed in 1997, after leading an armed campaign against British forces over civil rights for the Roman Catholic minority in Ireland. Others have since filled their place, such as the Real IRA, but they have failed to gain the amount of support that the IRA had during its prime.