Analysts said the middle-of-the-night blast — which blew out window frames and glass in several buildings, doing particular damage to the bank — appeared to have been timed to undermine the city's major Sinn Fein politician, Martin McGuinness.
McGuinness, who is also the senior Catholic in Northern Ireland's cross-community government, was attending the annual conference Tuesday of the ruling Conservative Party — long a target for IRA violence before the outlawed group's 1997 cease-fire.
McGuinness, a former IRA commander himself, condemned the dissidents as violence addicts and political cavemen.
Britain's MI5 spy agency and government have warned recently of an increased risk of resumed IRA dissident violence in England. The dissidents have not attempted any attacks in England since August 2001, when they car-bombed a shopping center west of London, wounding 11.
The IRA killed nearly 1,800 people in a failed 1970-1997 campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom and into the Republic of Ireland. The IRA-linked Sinn Fein party was permitted to enter a cross-community government with leaders of the territory's British Protestant majority as part of long-running negotiations.
Last year, dissidents shot to death two off-duty British soldiers and a policeman in Northern Ireland, and since have wounded several off-duty police officers or their relatives by planting booby-trap bombs under their cars.
This year's car bombs have been smaller than traditional IRA car bombs. They have caused mostly superficial damage to a courthouse, police stations, businesses and the regional MI5 headquarters east of Belfast.
- from associated press(http://news.yahoo.com)
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