A search of the Monaghan-Fermanagh Border is likely to continue today as gardai and Northern security forces follow up an anonymous report that a body had been dumped there.
Gardai supported by aerial surveillance from a Garda helicopter spent yesterday searching Border roads in the area east and west of the Clones-Roslea road, but did not find anything.
They were responding to an anonymous phone call to a Catholic clergyman in Monaghan at 8.25 p.m. on Tuesday saying a man had been killed in west Belfast and his body dumped on the Clones-Roslea Road.
The caller claimed to be representing the Continuity IRA, the republican paramilitary group associated with the splinter political party, Republican Sinn Fein.
The CIRA has been responsible for a number of bomb attacks in the North but is not yet known to be responsible for killing anyone.
The priest alerted local gardai who carried out a cursory search of the area but found nothing. At first light yesterday the search resumed, with the aid of the Garda helicopter and British army helicopters on the Northern side of the Border.
Supt Eddie Murray of Monaghan Garda station said the search would continue today until something was found or they were satisfied no body had been left in the area. He said there was no report of anyone having been killed or missing in west Belfast that they knew of.
The area has been used in the past by the Provisional IRA to dump bodies. In August, 1994, two weeks before calling its ceasefire, the IRA shot dead a west Belfast woman, Caroline Moorhead and left her body on a Border road about two miles east of the Clones-Roslea Road.
Ms Moorhead was a single mother of two young children and was suffering from cancer. The IRA accused her of being an informant.
While the Monaghan-Fermanagh area has been a Provisional IRA stronghold, the past year has seen more activity by the CIRA, with bomb attacks on a number of Protestant-owned premises in Fermanagh by CIRA figures believed operate from the Republic.
In a statement last night the Continuity IRA denied any involvement in prompting the search along the border. A caller to a Belfast newsroom, using a recognised code word, said it was not involved in the incident.