"Belfast bomb alert snarls roads on IRA anniversary" Associated Press September 02, 2014
BELFAST — Police said Monday a bomb alert that shut down Belfast’s main motorway on the 20th anniversary of the Irish Republican Army cease-fire was the result of an ‘‘elaborate hoax.’’
The closure of the M1 motorway caused traffic chaos. The three-lane road was reopened after British army experts using a robot determined that the suspicious device contained no explosives.
The disruption came two decades after the outlawed Provisional IRA called a cease-fire after a failed 24-year campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. The Provisionals abandoned their truce in 1996, restored it a year later, and disarmed and formally renounced violence in 2005.
IRA splinter groups who are opposed to Northern Ireland’s Catholic-Protestant government still mount occasional attacks and frequent hoax threats.
Last week, Irish and British leaders united at the Dublin funeral of Albert Reynolds, Ireland’s former prime minister. Reynolds helped forge a British-Irish peace plan for Northern Ireland that inspired the IRA cease-fire in 1994.
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