Object Found At Northern Ireland Airport Declared Safe

[News_Editor]

Object found at Northern Ireland airport declared safe < br /> 2012-05-15 21:56:21 GMT+7 (ICT) TRORY, NORTHERN IRELAND (BNO NEWS) -- A suspicious object which was found on a plane at a small regional airport in Northern Ireland on Monday evening has been declared safe, police said on Tuesday. A report by the BBC earlier claimed it was a bomb.Army Technical Officers (ATOs) were called to Enniskillen/St Angelo Airport near the town of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh at around 8 p.m. local time on Monday after a suspicious object was discovered on a plane. The main Enniskillen to Kesh road was closed during the alert.Airport sources told the BBC that the suspicious object had been confirmed to be a viable explosive device, but police denied those reports on Tuesday morning. "Police wish to say that the object found on a plane at St Angelo Airport last night was not an explosive device," said Lorraine McLearnon, a spokeswoman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).McLearnon said the package was examined at the scene by ATOs who determined it was "nothing untoward." Other details about the object and the incident, which comes amidst a series of security alerts, were not immediately released by authorities.Late last month, authorities in Northern Ireland defused two powerful car bombs which were blamed on dissident republican paramilitaries who remain violently opposed to a 1998 peace deal which ended most violence in the region. A car bomb found in Newry, not far from the border with the Republic of Ireland, contained some 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of homemade explosives.Just over 24 hours after the discovery in Newry, police evacuated up to 70 homes after a suspicious object was found under a parked car in a garage in north Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. The device was made safe several hours later, and officials said it would have been a 'real tragedy' if the bomb had exploded.And earlier this month, ATOs were called to the Ballysillan Presbyterian Church in northern Belfast after someone cutting grass discovered a suspicious device, prompting the evacuation of nearby residents. It turned out to be a pipe bomb which authorities said could have caused fatalities, but it remains unclear if the church was the target and who left it there.In August 1998, a total of 29 people were killed and more than 300 others were injured when a car bomb exploded in the town of Omagh in Northern Ireland. The attack, carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) which broke away from the mainstream Provisional IRA, was Northern Ireland's worst terror attack in 30 years.The peace deal in 1998 brought an end to more than three decades of violence between mainly nationalist Catholics opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland and pro-union Protestants who wanted it to continue. In April 2011, a booby-trap car bomb near Omagh killed Police Constable Ronan Kerr.

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