The Guardian
Henry McDonald
Republican dissidents are being blamed for a so-called paramilitary "punishment shooting" in Derry on Tuesday night in a week marked by an escalation in terrorism across Northern Ireland. Organisations on the republican side opposed to the peace process have bombed MI5's regional headquarters, left a car bomb at a police station and caused widespread traffic disruption in a series of other security alerts over the last 72 hours.
In the latest incident, armed republicans shot a 24-year-old man in the back of the leg after a group of masked men broke into a house in the Cable Street area of Derry city.
Security sources said the shooting was part of a campaign by dissidents in Derry that has seen more than a dozen or so men shot during the past year.
The latest attack was condemned by the SDLP Assembly member in Derry, Pat Ramsey. He said: "Kangaroo justice was wrong in the past and it's wrong now. There can never be any justification for vigilantism and the people of Derry are angry that those carrying out the attack are claiming to do so in their name. They're not acting in the interests of the people of Derry.
"The only way we can move forward as a community is if people fully embrace the justice system and leave behind methods of taking the law into their own hands."
Meanwhile, the PSNI confirmed that a device left outside Newtownhamilton police station in south Armagh on Tuesday was a viable bomb. Army technical officers defused the device, left in a hijacked silver Peugeot car at the police base's main gate in the early hours of Tuesday.
It was the 34th terrorist attack on the station near the Irish border since the early 1970s. .
Detectives continue to hunt for the gang behind the bomb attack last Monday on the MI5 base at Palace Barracks in Holywood, Co Down. No one was injured in a blast timed to go off hours before the Northern Ireland Assembly elected its first justice minister in 38 years.
One reasons why the MI5 headquarters was targeted is because the new justice minister, David Ford, has no control over the operations of the security services in the region. Rather than the Real IRA, a smaller republican group known as Oghlaigh na hEireann was behind the MI5 attack.
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