Police are investigating a potential dissident republican plot to blow up a lorry on its way to Scotland on Brexit day.
Officers in Northern Ireland are investigating a link between a ferry crossing to Scotland on January 31 and a bomb found on a heavy goods vehicle in Co Armagh earlier this week.
Police received a report that an explosive device was on a lorry in Belfast docks last Friday, the day the UK left the EU.
It claimed the ferry was due to travel across the Irish Sea to Scotland.
An intensive search was carried out but nothing was found, and the ferry sailed as planned.
But three days later, on Monday, officers received a further report that a device was attached to a lorry belonging to a named haulage company.
After a two-day operation, which involved the search of 400 vehicles, an explosive device was found attached to a heavy goods vehicle in the Silverwood Industrial Estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh.
It was made safe by Army bomb disposal officers.
Detective superintendent Sean Wright, from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Terrorism Investigation Unit, said: “It is clear from the information available to police that dissident republicans deliberately and recklessly attached an explosive device to a heavy goods vehicle in the full knowledge and expectation that it would put the driver of that vehicle, road users and the wider public at serious risk of injury and possible death.”
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