Spate of bombings in Ulster

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32880, 1 April 1972, Page 17

Spate of bombings in Ulster

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

BELFAST, March 31.

Hopes for a peaceful Easter week-end in Northern Ireland were dimmed this morning after a spate of bombings and gunfire in the province. A woman was killed in the cross-fire of a three-and-a-half-hour gun battle between British troops and guerrillas in a Roman Catholic district of Belfast last night.

And there were five bomb blasts in the Belfast area within two hours late yesterday. The worst, a car-bomb left at a shopping centre in Lisburn. just outside the capital, injured 18 persons, four of them seriously. One of the victims was reported to have lost an arm and a leg. An explosion in a draper’s shop in a Belfast suburb injured six persons. In Omagh, in the west of the province, a bomb went off in a car parked near an Army Information Office, injuring eight persons. Police were given 15 minutes notice of the explosion, but said that all the people injured' had ignored their warnings'

that there was a bomb planted in the car and continued to walk past it. The incidents in the Belfast area were the worst since the British Government announced a week ago that it was taking over the administration of Northern Ireland and proroguing the semiindependent provincial parliament. The formal transfer of power was made yesterday when the necessary legislation passed through both Houses of Parliament in London and was given Royal assent. The designated administrator for Northern Ireland, Mr William Whitelaw, immediately flew to Belfast from London to be present during the Easter week-end.

There has been a relative calm in the province since the British initiative was announced —and welcomed by large sectors of the Roman Catholic minority. But in the past, Easter week-ends have seen an upsurge in the sectarian violence between Roman Catholics and the Protestant majority. Mr Brian Faulkner, the Northern Ireland Prime Minister, resigned from office yesterday as the British legislation went into effect. In a statement he said that he and his mainly-Protestant Unionist Party Government had been treated badly by the British, but he gave a warning against letting Protestant anger explode into violence. He denounced Roman Catholic violence, and added: “There could be no greater danger to our position in the United Kingdom than a feeling in Great Britain that we are all like that —and that Ulster people as a whole were ready to repudiate law, to disown authority and disregard duty.”