A BOOBY-TRAP BOMB intended for a joint British army RUC foot patrol could have killed a 15-month-old child, her grandmother said yesterday. The bomb exploded at lunchtime on Glenalina Road in the nationalist Ballymurphy estate, shattering windows and damaging a garden wall.
Ms Helen Savage (41) said that if the bomb had exploded 10 minutes earlier, and if her granddaughter been with her, the baby could have been killed or seriously injured. The force of the blast had showered shards of glass into Ms Savage's living room.
No one was injured in the incident, which the RUC believes was the work of the IRA. No organisation has admitted responsibility for the attack, which was close to two schools. Several people were being held by the RUC last night.
The RUC said that the bomb was planted behind a low red-brick wall in the garden of a corner house and detonated by a command wire from a firing point outside a house in Divismore Crescent, some 50 yards away.
The blast blew a five-foot-wide crater in the garden and scattered bricks some 30 yards away.
Many residents said they were angry that the attack had been launched in such a densely-populated area at a time when children were returning from the local nursery and primary school.
The SDLP MP for the area, Dr Joe Hendron, said he believed the IRA was "deliberately attempting" to draw the loyalist paramilitaries into a new war.
Insp Graham Shields said he was "totally amazed" that no one had been killed or injured in the attack. It was "a testimony to what the IRA is about in this area" and should be condemned by "all right-thinking people", he said.
Meanwhile, the RUC last night displayed two coffee-jar bombs, two primed grenades, Semtex explosives and radio equipment seized in the Short Strand area of east Belfast.
In Dungannon, Co Tyrone, army technical officers last night examined a suspect object which was at the centre of a security alert from early yesterday. The area around the Donaghmore, Mullaghmore and Newell Road was cordoned off for most of the day.
A 31-year-old man will appear in Belfast Magistrates' Court today charged with possession of weapons and ammunition with intention to endanger life. The charges follow the seizure on Wednesday of two sub-machine-guns and four magazines of ammunition in the Woodvale area of Belfast.