BELFAST (Reuters) - Army experts in Northern Ireland have defused a bomb which targeted police officers, police said Thursday.
Sporadic violence in Northern Ireland has increased in recent months since republican dissidents killed two British soldiers and a police officer in two separate attacks in March, threatening a decade-long peace process.
"I have no doubt the aim was to kill police officers," Chief Superintendent Alasdair Robin said of the device found on Thursday in Armagh.
The March killings marked a low point since a 1998 peace deal mostly ended 30 years of conflict between the IRA, seeking a united Ireland, and groups wanting to maintain British control of the province.
More recently a car bomb hurt a police officer's partner in Belfast in October, a month after a huge bomb was defused and a small device exploded outside the home of parents of a police officer.
"Those who operate under various flags of convenience are simply terrorists and criminals who wish to drag everyone back to the dark days of the past by using violence as a so-called political tool," Robin said in a statement.
(Writing by Andras Gergely)
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