‘We set off bomb near peer’s estate’ - Continuity IRA

Dissident republicans tonight claimed responsibility for an explosion close to the Co Fermanagh estate of Unionist peer Lord Brookeborough.

The Continuity IRA said it had set off a bomb at Colebrooke, and police said they had sealed off the area following reports of a loud explosion during the night.

Viscount Brookeborough was not on the estate tonight but his mother said the blast had been on a road outside the estate and near a church. No one had been injured, she said.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a Co Fermanagh newspaper had received a call, accompanied by a recognised code word, claiming to be from the Continuity IRA and saying it had made the attack.

The republican group has rarely been active in the past couple of years but, when it is, tends to launch attacks in Co Fermanagh.

News of the attack was given to peers in the House of Lords just before the Prime Minister’s statement on the state of the IRA and loyalist ceasefires was read to them.

Leader of the Lords, Lord Williams of Mostyn told members: ‘‘I have been given quite recently some information which your lordships will want to know, which is that there was an attack with explosives on the property of Viscount Brookeborough.’’

Lord Brookeborough, an honorary colonel in the Territorial Army, is the son of the 1st Viscount who was Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1943 to 1963.

As Captain John Brooke he succeeded his father as Stormont MP for Lisnaskea, Co Fermanagh in 1968 and held the seat until the dissolution of the parliament in 1972 when direct rule was introduced.

The Police Service said later it was investigating reports of a loud explosion in the Colebrooke area of Brookeborough at 12.45am today.

Nothing had yet been found and a search for the site of the explosion was expected to carry on for two more days.

Meanwhile, there was a security alert at Belfast International Airport tonight. Police were searching the terminal building and car parks after a bomb warning, said a police spokesman.

Passengers were warned there would be lengthy delays, but that they should turn up for flights as scheduled.