Belfast police find pipe bombs, ammo linked to outlawed INLA

DUBLIN – Northern Ireland police say they have seized five pipe bombs and ammunition belonging to an Irish Republican Army splinter group that was supposed to have disarmed in support of the region’s peace process.

Detective Chief Inspector Pete Mullan said Tuesday’s police search at a home in Catholic west Belfast found a weapons cache linked to the outlawed Irish National Liberation Army. That breakaway IRA faction, founded in 1974, killed more than 120 people before calling a 1998 cease-fire and surrendering weapons stockpiles to disarmament officials in 2010.

Mullan said those responsible for constructing the pipe bombs made them “for one purpose only: to kill and injure people.”

Several small IRA splinter groups retain support bases in working-class Catholic districts of Northern Ireland, a long-disputed corner of the United Kingdom.