Omagh booby-trap bomb kills policeman

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Deadly terrorism returned to the scene of the worst atrocity of the Northern Ireland Troubles when a booby-trap car bomb exploded in Omagh.

One police officer was confirmed killed in the blast underneath a car in Highfield Close in the Co Tyrone town. The officer, a local Catholic named as Ronan Kerr, had been preparing to drive to work in the local Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) station. The bomb exploded shortly before 4pm, close to a Gaelic sports club in a new housing development off the Gortin Road, near the town centre.

Suspicion for this latest bomb attack will now fall on one of three republican dissident terror groups that have resumed their violent campaigns in the north of Ireland over recent weeks.

The attack in Omagh will conjure up memories of August 1998 when a Real IRA car bomb exploded in the centre of the market town. Twenty-nine men, women and children died in the bombing, as well two unborn children. It was the single biggest loss of life during 35 years of conflict.

No one was ever convicted of direct involvement in the atrocity, although some of the families of Omagh's victims later took a landmark civil action against a number of men they claimed were leading figures in the Real IRA – one of the three dissident groups considered most likely to have carried out the bombing.

The alleged Real IRA leaders are currently appealing against a high court ruling that they must pay compensation to the victims of the Omagh bombing.

The Omagh bomb also resulted in a damning police ombudsman report criticising the Royal Ulster Constabulary's handling of intelligence material prior to the Real IRA attack.

The atrocity came just five months after the Good Friday peace agreement was signed. Although a faction of the Real IRA declared a ceasefire, militants broke away and formed terror units, including Óglaigh na hÉireann (ONH). The group has attracted a number of former Provisional IRA bombers. Last year it detonated a bomb underneath the car of Catholic PSNI officer Peadar Heffron, who lost his legs in the blast.

The death of the officer in Omagh brings to two the number of PSNI members who have been killed by terrorists since the police service underwent radical reforms in Northern Ireland. One of the dissidents' main strategies is to target Catholic recruits to the police service in order to deter nationalists from joining the security forces.

The same tactic was used by the Provisional IRA from the start of the Troubles in 1969 when the Provisionals targeted Catholic recruits to the now defunct RUC and the local military force, the Ulster Defence Regiment.