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- WORLD, Page 47World NotesNORTHERN IRELANDAn Inhuman New Weapon
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- Northern Ireland's 20 years of violence have produced
- instances of breathtaking brutality, but last week the Irish
- Republican Army reached a new low when it turned innocent
- civilians into human bombs. Seven persons were killed and at
- least 36 injured in synchronized dawn attacks, when two
- explosive-laden vans blew up at British army checkpoints near
- Londonderry, in the northwest, and Newry, in the south. Their
- drivers, one of whom survived, had been forcibly strapped into
- their seats.
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- To ensure that the vans were driven with their murderous
- cargo into the checkpoints, British authorities said, I.R.A.
- gunmen held the drivers' families hostage in their homes, while
- other I.R.A. men followed the vans at close shooting range,
- veering off just before the explosions. A third human bomb
- intended to blow up simultaneously at a British army barracks
- failed to detonate. Said Northern Ireland Secretary Peter
- Brooke: "It is hard to imagine anything more evil."
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