Gardaí confident of arrests connected to Cork City petrol bomb attacks 'in the near future'

None of the attacks have been connected to each other, with different motives in each case, he said.

Investigations are ongoing into all the attacks, CCTV has been harvested and door-to-door enquiries have been undertaken.

Despite the recent spate of targeted petrol bomb attacks, this form of crime is not prevalent in Cork, Det Supt Comyns said.

But it is lucky that there were no serious injuries or fatalities in these cases, he said.

Supt Comyns said he is confident there will be arrests “in the near future”. 

Young children were sleeping in the house that was most recently targeted in Cork City.

A woman had to flee the home in Meadow Park Avenue in Ballyvolane on the city’s northside with young children after a petrol bomb was thrown through a downstairs window, setting fire to the sitting room.

Some of the home’s inhabitants were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation by ambulance crews, but no other injuries were reported.

Although the petrol bomb ignited quickly, it also burned out quickly, causing some fire damage to the sitting room but mostly causing smoke damage, sources said.

Army bomb disposal unit

The attack on Thursday morning at about 4.45am was the third such attack on that home in recent years.

It was damaged in another petrol bomb attack in December 2022, and a grenade was thrown at the property, although it was found still unexploded in the garden, in September 2024. Much of the estate had to be evacuated while the army bomb disposal unit worked to disarm that device.

And in February this year, a car pulled up to the property and someone fired three gunshots before fleeing the scene, sources said. Nobody was injured in this incident.

Cork City has seen a spate of other petrol bomb attacks this year.

Earlier this month, on May 20, there was another suspected firebomb attack in the Tramore Rd area of Ballyphehane in the city’s southside at 2am.

On February 23, a man in his 20s had to drop his nine-year-old sister from an upstairs window to neighbours below following another suspected petrol bomb attack on a family home in the Clarkes Rd area of Ballyphehane.

Seven days earlier, a 13-year-old boy and his mother in her 40s escaped a fire at their home at Silverbirch in Rochestown on the city's southside at about 12.30am on February 16.

The child's brother, a 24-year-old man, jumped from an upstairs window of the home to escape the fire, injuring his legs and breaking his ankle in the fall.

Residents of Meadow Park Avenue in Ballyvolane, where the most recent firebomb attack took place, are now “terrorised”, Sinn Féin TD for Cork North Central Thomas Gould said.

“There's been at least two petrol bomb attacks, a hand grenade. There have been shots fired in February," he said.

“Will someone die there next? That's the question now."

He said gardaí have confirmed to him they’re putting extra patrols in the area.

“My fear has been that this will escalate. And it has already been escalating in Cork over the last couple of years.

“We need resources in Cork. We need extra gardaí and we need judges to give serious sentences to anyone involved in this."