Elderly couple survive grenade attack

AN elderly couple narrowly escaped with their lives after a grenade was thrown into their kitchen and exploded.

Gardaí said the grenade — a military-style fragmentation grenade — blew a “big hole” in the kitchen and sent shrapnel up through the ceiling and even the roof of the two-storey house.

Detectives said the shocking attack is linked to a new feud in the Crumlin-Drimnagh area of south Dublin.

Garda sources said the elderly couple were in the kitchen — at the back of the house — when a rock was thrown in smashing the glass.

The attackers then pulled out the lever of the grenade and flung it into the kitchen. The couple — who are innocent — managed to get out of the kitchen by the time the grenade went off.

“Amazingly they were not injured, but they were badly shocked,” said a garda source.

The attack happened at a house on Downpartick Road in Crumlin, at 10pm on Wednesday.

Gardaí later arrested two men in their early 20s and are questioning them under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act.

Garda sources said the attack was part of a new feud within a gang controlled by a crime boss who heads one of the two feuding Crumlin-Drimnagh gangs. This main feud has claimed up to 14 lives in the last 10 years.

One Garda source said six members of this gang — led by a leader who has fled the country to Spain — had fallen out with each other over money, with three members on each side. Gardaí said the bomb attack has followed other incidents, including car burnings.