More Irish Violence Feared After British Headquarters Bombed No One Claims Responsibility For Car Bombs That Injured 31

Bombers struck at the center of Northern Ireland’s security Monday, detonating two car bombs inside the British army’s heavily defended headquarters and raising fears the province could again become a battleground between the IRA and proBritish paramilitaries. Thirty-one people were wounded.

There was no claim of responsibility. Whether the attack was carried out by the Irish Republican Army or by another anti-British group might determine whether the province’s pro-British paramilitaries call off their own cease-fire - and send Northern Ireland back into retaliatory violence.

The first bomb went off without warning in a parking lot inside Thiepval Barracks, the main camp for the 18,000 army troops in the British-ruled province.

A second detonated 20 minutes later near the base’s hospital, apparently to ambush passing soldiers, medical staff and people wounded by the first bomb.

As flames and black smoke billowed from the blast site, soldiers and paramedics hauled off the wounded on foam mattresses. Some of the people injured in the second blast included medical staff attending to the victims of the first.

The army said 21 of the injured were soldiers and 10 were civilians - including the three most seriously hurt. One man was critically wounded and four received serious head, chest and leg wounds.