Ira Claims Responsibility For Bombings

The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility Tuesday night for Monday’s bomb attack at British army headquarters in Northern Ireland that injured 30 people, including civilians and children.

The attack was the first in two years in Northern Ireland by the militant organization, which has fought an often violent campaign to end British rule in the province and unite it with the neighboring Irish Republic. The IRA had staged several bombings since ending an 17-month-old cease-fire last February but had confined the attacks to the British mainland.

Protestant loyalist paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland, which favor continued British rule, have been threatening for some months to resume their campaign of violence if the IRA staged an attack inside the province. Confirmation of the IRA’s role in Monday’s bombing raises the specter of such retaliation and a return of the kind of tit-for-tat sectarian violence that claimed 3,000 lives in the province between 1969 and 1994.

Officials in Dublin, capital of the Irish Republic, were on a high state of alert Tuesday, fearing possible attacks by such loyalist groups. British Prime Minister John Major Tuesday night pleaded with the loyalists not to “fall into this trap” set by the IRA, which he said was “trying to provoke a general return to violence in Northern Ireland. We must not let them succeed.”

Two bombs - apparently synchronized for maximum mayhem - exploded Monday afternoon about 13 minutes apart inside the intensely guarded army facility in Lisburn, 10 miles from Belfast. Although no group immediately claimed responsibility, many assumed it was the work of the IRA.

And Tuesday night, in a phone call to the Irish broadcasting network RTE, using an authenticating code, the group confirmed the assumptions.

The IRA accompanied its statement with a repetition of its accusation that the British government had not lived up to its responsibilities in the Irish peace initiative.

Sinn Fein, the outlawed IRA’s legal political wing, has been excluded from ongoing multi-party talks toward a permanent settlement of Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant strife because of the IRA’s refusal to reinstate its cease-fire. Loyalist parties have been allowed to participate because their paramilitary wings have maintained their cease-fires.