Bomb found ahead of queen's Ireland visit

The queen's visit is to go ahead despite the bomb scare, the home office said [Reuters] Queen Elizabeth's visit to Ireland, the first by a British royal in a century, will go ahead despite a bomb being found on a bus near Dublin, the Irish capital, the British foreign office said on Tuesday. Ireland's military said earlier that a homemade bomb had been found in the luggage compartment of a bus and blown up by the army in a controlled detonation. A second device reported on Tuesday was a hoax, officials said. A spokesman for the British foreign office said: "The state visit is still going ahead." Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons, in Dublin, said: "The device was on the outskirts in the commuter belt. It was inside a luggage compartment of a bus, and that bus was headed for the capital." "[There are] are no claims of responsibility but you can certainly say that it's highly likely that dissident Republican groups are involved in the attempts at disruption of this historic visit." The queen is the first British monarch to visit Ireland since its independence from the UK in 1921. Her itinerary includes a visit to Croke Park, a Gaelic sports stadium where British troops killed 14 people in 1920 during Ireland's uprising against British rule.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

 

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