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Belfast City Hall Bomb Alert
A "crude but viable" device was found at Belfast City Hall today and the building had to be evacuated, although has now been reopened after police remvoed a number of items from the scene.
There was also a bomb scare at Boating Club Lane in Londonderry, which was declared an elaborate hoax after the army carried out a controlled explosion. The device was similar to one used in an attack by republicans on SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey at the weekend and police believe it was the same people behind the attacks.
Follow up:
I don't know why but it seems a bit scary to think that City Hall (or at least part of it) could have been blown up by a bomb. I'm not sure why that immediately struck me as more shocking than, for example, a city-centre retail outlet - but it did. Perhaps City Hall is somewhere you'd expect to have better security arrangements in place.
It's got to the stage now it's just depressing. People have been working on peace for 10 years here and still you get this sort of pointless, dangerous exercise. Concession after concession has been made, but obviously some won't be happy until they get their way - and as long as they're not happy they won't let anyone else be happy either. I just don't know if there's an answer... but have to admit the firing squad is sounding like a good one at the moment.