Prison officers in the North have been told to tighten their personal security following an IRA bomb alert over Christmas. The warning was issued after the IRA in a coded message to a Belfast newsroom claimed to have left a bomb under a prison officer's car outside a social club at the Maze prison, Co Antrim, on Christmas Eve.
The caller said the device, which had been planted, had either failed to explode or had fallen off the car. The RUC sealed off a road near the jail and searched vehicles but nothing was found.
