Republican News · Thursday 9 January 2003

UDA plants pipe bomb at Holy Cross

Holy Cross Primary Girls School in north Belfast has once again become the target of loyalist paramilitaries.

Children returning from the Christmas break were taken to classes through an emergency back exit when parents received news that a pipe bomb had been found fastened to the front gates of the school.

The device was discovered by the school caretaker at around 8am on Monday morning and was later defused by the British Army.

The Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for the UDA, claimed responsibility for the attack and issued a further threat to the staff and pupils of the school, saying Holy Cross had one week to close its doors for good.

The Chairman of the Holy Cross Board of Governors, Father Aiden Troy, said it was his hope the bomb was an isolated incident, adding that the Board had no intention of closing the school.

"Great care will be taken to make sure the school will be examined before anyone goes near it," he said.

The families of Holy Cross are still suffering the effects of the past loyalist blockade, and so many parents chose not to tell their children the real reason for their unsheduled morning detour. Some simply took their daughters home while others said the front gates had been frozen shut by the cold. Once the children reached the school, classes continued as usual.

Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly said the attack was a cynical attempt by the UDA to draw attention away from their own internal feud.

"Unionist politicians and community workers must do all in their power to end such attacks," said Kelly, "We have, in recent days, seen unionist politicians be highly outpoken in their calls for loyalists to end their feud. Unionists need to be as vocal in their calls for attacks upon nationalists to end."

Startled awake from his moral coma, MP for the area Nigel Dodds publically condemned the bomb, saying he was "utterly appauled" by the incident.

"What on earth any organisation hopes to gain by this sort of action is beyond all right thinking people. It's without logic, it's without common sense, as well as being totally and utterly morally repugnant."

But Dodds repeatedly refused to meet with parents from the school when the violence of the loyalist blockade was in full swing, in spite of the fact that they were his constituents.

Parents of Holy Cross students are taking the threat very seriously and their apprehension and anger is growing. Tensions are already building in anticipation of what might take place after the threatened one-week 'deadline' passes.

For twelve weeks in 2001, the families of Holy Cross suffered a continuous loyalist siege that still staggers the imagination. They endured pipe and blast bombs, the threat of snipers, the violence of protesting loyalists and all the uncertainty and terror that the very worst loyalist thugs could direct their way.

Back then, the UDA issued the threat that it would shoot any parents taking their children up to Holy Cross and though the 'protest' may have eventually been 'suspended', the UDA has never lifted its threat against the parents.