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BELFAST: An unexploded bomb was found Monday near a police station in Northern Ireland, officers said, in the latest threat to the troubled British province's fragile peace.
The device was found outside a station in the northwest town of Strabane, sparking evacuation of nearby homes as army bomb disposal experts worked to remove it, police said.
Chief Inspector Andy Lemon denounced the planting of the device, which comes after a massive car bomb last week just failed to explode outside a police headquarters in Belfast.
"This device was in waste ground, near to homes and local life, and had it gone off, we could have been dealing with a very different situation today," Lemon said. "There could have been serious death or injury caused," he added.
Police received a telephone warning about the device.
The incident comes at a delicate time for Northern Ireland's peace process.
The main Protestant and Catholic parties, who share power in the province's devolved assembly, are at loggerheads over when policing and justice responsibility should be transferred from London to Belfast.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Republic of Ireland counterpart Brian Cowen met in London earlier Monday and vowed to hold talks with the parties involved over the next few days to break the deadlock.
After three decades of sectarian violence, Northern Ireland has been largely peaceful since the 1998 Good Friday agreement paved the way to power-sharing between the province's Protestant majority and Catholic minority.
But the killings of two British soldiers and a police officer in March and increasing activity by dissidents have highlighted the renewed threat posed by paramilitary groups.
On November 21, a car containing a 400-pound (180-kilogramme) device, crashed through barriers outside police offices in Belfast and partially exploded. Elsewhere the same night, police exchanged shots with paramilitaries in a village.
- AFP/yb
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