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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Loyalists End Truce, Injure Ira Supporter

Compiled From Wire Services

A car bomb wounded a prominent Irish Republican Army supporter Sunday, signaling the apparent end of a 26-month truce by pro-British Protestant militants.

No one claimed responsibility for the small bomb, which could have large ramifications for Northern Ireland’s deteriorating peace process.

Loyalists - Protestant militants who want to maintain British rule in Northern Ireland - kept to their cease-fire for more than nine months despite the IRA’s decision to resume hostilities in February.

An end to their truce could trigger a new round of tit-for-tat violence between the two sides, and the possible exclusion of political parties affiliated with loyalist militants from negotiations over the future of the province.

The bomb detonated when the owner, 35-year-old Eddie Copeland, started his Honda Civic outside his parents’ house in Ardoyne, a Roman Catholic enclave of north Belfast surrounded by Protestant districts.

The blast blew off the car’s hood but caused little other damage. Copeland suffered leg wounds.

“His leg was all open, but he was conscious,” said neighbor Joe Lee, who helped stanch the flow of blood until medics arrived.

Copeland was a known IRA supporter. In October 1993, he was shot in the stomach by an angry British soldier as he attended the funeral of an IRA man who killed himself and nine Protestants in a bombing.