I.R.A. bomb goes off 400m from Queen

Press, 12 May 1981, Page 8

I.R.A. bomb goes off 400m from Queen

NZPA-Reuter Belfast Police fears that Irish Republican Army guerrillas planned to avenge the death of the hunger striker, Bobby Sands, by assassinating prominent figures mounted yesterday after the authorities confirmed rumours of an explosion at a Scottish oil terminal while the Queen, Prince Philip and King Olav V of Norway were there. The blast occurred at the week-end at the Sullom Voe North Sea oil terminal in the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland, soon after the I.R.A.’s “Provisional” wing said it had planted a device there.

The police did not confirm the explosion until yesterday after rumours of it had circulated in the island for 24 hours.

Chief Constable Donald Henderson in Lerwick, the main town in the remote islands, said the explosion damaged the ■ terminal’s power station but caused no casualties. The Queen was officially opening the terminal in a building 400 m away, and nobody among the 700 guests there heard the blast.

The terminal is the biggest in Western Europe. A spokesman for BP would not confirm that a bomb was involved. “It could have been an explosive device or a mechanical malfunction,” he said.

I.R.A. sources in Dublin said the bomb contained 3 kgs of gelignite. British Army sources believe the bomb could have been planted some time before the well-publisized Royal visit, when security was not so tight, and was probably a “sleeper” device with a longdelayed timer. The “Proves” planted a “sleeper” bomb in the grounds of the new University of Ulster at Coleraine, north of Belfast, before the Queen visited the campus on her Silver Jubilee visit in August, 1978. It exploded several hours after the Royal party had left.

The Sullom Voe blast heightened official fears in Belfast that the outlawed I.R.A. will soon seek to assassinate prominent figures in reprisal for Sands’ death last week. The emotive fast and his death sparked fierce riots in

Rorrian Catholic areas of Northern Ireland. The street violence died down at the week-end and the police reported only minor skirmishes in Belfast on Sunday. But tension remained high as another hunger striker, the convicted killer Francis Hughes, aged 25, was reported to be slipping nearer death yesterday, the fiftyeighth day of his fast.

His brother, Oliver, said after visiting him in the Maze hospital wing that he was blind and extremely weak.

Hughes is serving a life sentence for killing an undercover British soldier in March, 1978, and for two attempted murders. He was the most wanted I.R.A. guerrilla in Northern Ireland until his capture after a gunfight with soldiers. Hughes had received the last rites, his supporters said yesterday. The authorities speculated that his condition had deteriorated more quickly than normal because of the serious wound he suffered in the thigh during his gunbattle with British troops.