Northern Irish police investigate Brexit day bomb plot

Northern Irish police investigate dissident republican Brexit day bomb plot

A dissident republican bomb believed to be intended for mainland Britain was found in a lorry in a Co Armagh industrial estate on Monday, according to the PSNI.

Police in Northern Ireland believe dissident republicans are linked to a bomb that was discovered in Lurgan, Co Armagh this week

The device was found attached to a lorry in an industrial estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh on Monday, February 3, police said.

Police first received a tip that there was an explosive device on a lorry at Belfast Docks on Friday. The report claimed that the lorry was to travel from Belfast to Scotland and explode in Britain on January 31, the day the United Kingdom left the European Union.

PSNI officials carried out a sweep and found no sign of a bomb and the ferry sailed to Scotland as planned.

However, Northern Irish police received a second report on Monday that a device was attached to a named haulage company, resulting in a two-day search.

After the two-day operation, which involved the search of over 400 trucks in the Silverwood industrial estate in Lurgan, police discovered the bomb attached to a heavy goods vehicle.

The bomb was safely disarmed by army bomb disposal officers. The size of the bomb is not known.

The bomb is believed to have been placed on a haulage company truck that specializes in transporting frozen goods across the UK, Ireland, and Europe.

Sean Wright, Detective Superintendent of the PSNI's Counter-Terrorism Unit, condemned the plot and blasted the dissident republican movement.

"It is clear from the information available to police that dissident republicans deliberately and recklessly attached an explosive device to a heavy goods vehicle in the full knowledge and expectation that it would put the driver of that vehicle, road users and the wider public at serious risk of injury and possible death," Wright said.

"The only conclusion that we can draw is that once again Dissident Republicans have shown a total disregard for the community, for businesses and for wider society."

The Detective Superintendent called for any members of the public who may have witnessed unusual activity in the Silverwood Industrial Estate to come forward.

On Thursday, the president of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald condemned the plot: "There is no appetite anywhere in the island for a return to armed or violent actions of any sort and those that attempted this act know that and I would say to them desist, stop it, you achieve nothing'."