Irish separatists claim responsibility for parcel bombs found in UK

The Irish Republican Army, a violent movement seeking separation of Northern Ireland from the UK, says it was behind a series of bomb packages sent to crowded locations across Britain last week.

The UK police said on Monday that IRA’s claim of responsibility came earlier in the day through a Northern Ireland media outlet using a recognized codeword.

The police said the group had claimed five devices were sent to locations in London and in Scotland although officers recovered only four.

The official line of the UK government is that the IRA, the dominant force behind three decades of troubles that ended in late 1990s, has no official presence anymore and those calling themselves IRA are in fact offshoots of the group.

However, the country is experiencing a new wave of separatist activities over Northern Ireland, a province where many are still unhappy with the British rule and seek independence or a merger with the Republic of Ireland. There have been a major bombing and two shootings in the province since the start of the year while the arrivals of bomb packages have added to the public concerns that violence could return to the streets of UK.

olice Scotland and the Metropolitan Police of London had earlier suspected the parcel bombs, discovered at three London transport hubs and the University of Glasgow last week, could have come from Irish separatists due to similarities they had to devices sent by Northern Ireland dissident groups in the past.

The revived separatism in Northern Ireland comes amid warnings that a historic ceasefire agreement signed in 1998 may need to change if Britain fails to guarantee that the border between the two Irelands will remain open following London’s imminent withdrawal from the European Union.