Car bomb hoax causes 50 families to be evacuated

FAMILIES in up to 50 homes were evacuated yesterday morning when a hoax bomb was found attached to a car.

At around 7am, a passerby noticed a suspicious device attached to a vehicle outside a semi-detached home in Grange Abbey Grove in Baldoyle, north Dublin.

Gardaí were called and the bomb squad with the Defence Forces was alerted before 9am.

Local residents, some still in their dressing gowns and pyjamas, were immediately moved out of their homes as it was initially feared the device was viable and explosive.

It was described as a cylindrical transparent glass object that had powder and liquid substances inside and was attached to wires and a circuit board.

A remote team with the army’s Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit was used to help remove the device.

After an examination of the device attached to the windscreen of a car, it emerged that it was an elaborate hoax.

The removal of the device took up to five hours.

Residents from the suburb were allowed return to their homes and the device was handed over to gardaí for a technical examination.

Gardaí believe that the hoax was intended to serve as a warning and to cause distress and alarm in the area.

One senior source said: “Its purpose was to cause alarm, but it was not something particular. It could have been put together by watching a movie.”

Meanwhile, gardaí yesterday made an appeal for witnesses of a shooting incident which took place on Tuesday morning.

A gunman fired three shots into the front window of a flat in Ballybough House at 2am.

Detectives believe that the shots were fired from inside the railings at Poplar Row, in between the East Wall Road and Clonliffe Road.

Nobody was injured in the shooting but gardaí want to speak to anyone who may have witnessed the shots being fired.