Policeman fights for life after car-bomb attack

A Catholic police officer was fighting for his life today after being critically injured by a booby trap bomb in the North blamed on dissident republicans.

Peadar Heffron, 33, had just left his home outside Randalstown, Co Antrim, to start duty in west Belfast when the device exploded under his blue Alfa Romeo car.

Constable Heffron, who spoke Irish and was captain of the PSNI's gaelic football team, was married last year.

His cousin Martin Totten, who met him with his new wife Fiona out shopping in a Tesco supermarket in Antrim just days ago, said last night: “This is terrifying. I just hope we’re not slipping back into the dark old days. Everybody thought this was all behind us.”

Shocked neighbours rushed to help the injured officer whose car careered sideways on the slippery Milltown Road around 6.30am, half a mile from where he lived.

He was then taken to hospital for emergency treatment before being transferred to the Royal Victoria in Belfast where he remained in a critical condition.

Up to a dozen police cars escorted the ambulance as it drove along the M2 motorway into the city.

The explosion happened two miles from Massereene army barracks, Antrim, where two soldiers just about to leave for Afghanistan were shot dead by the Real IRA last March. Mark Quinsey, 23 and Patrick Azimkar, 21, were gunned down as they accepted a pizza delivery outside the gates of the base.

Th North's First Minister Peter Robinson, the deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and the Taoiseach Brian Cowen, as well as other politicians and church leaders on all sides, condemned the bombing.

It is the latest in a series of attacks by dissidents and virtually identical to one close to the PSNI headquarters in Belfast where an officer’s girlfriend narrowly escaped death last October.

Last year Constable Heffron, who has served with the police for nine years, was among officers who attended the first meeting where discussions in Derry between Policing Board officials and members of the public were conducted in the Irish language.

He also played a key role in establishing the PSNI’s gaelic football team and was this season’s captain.

He once played for Kickhams Creggan, a GAA club based in Randalstown where Mr Totten, the club secretary, spoke of his shock at the attack.

He said: “I really thought we were past this. I thought with the Good Friday Agreement and all the political progress that these sort of actions had ended and that policing was no longer considered by the Catholic fraternity as a problem area. Catholic members of the police service should be accepted.”

Detective Chief Superintendent Derek Williamson, who is heading the police investigation, urged people in the area to come forward if they noticed anything suspicious. He branded the attackers “faceless cowardly thugs”.

He added: “They skulked under the cover of darkness to try and kill or injure this officer.”