Terrorism is back in Northern Ireland

Even the dissidents have now spawned their own heavily armed dissidents. The bomb defused by army experts at Forkhill this week was the work not of the Real IRA but one of its own breakaway groups, Oglaigh na hEireann. The bomb was bigger than the Real IRA bomb in Omagh which killed unborn twins, six men, 12 women and 11 children. It brings into sharp relief the problems now facing the security services.

Another illustration of these problems came last month. In the village of Meigh in south Armagh, near the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, a police car encountered seven heavily armed terrorists — they even had a rocket launcher with them — operating a vehicle checkpoint and handing out leaflets telling locals not to co-operate with the security services. The police, who were lightly armed — and, it was later rumoured, undertrained in firearm use — beat a hasty retreat.