IRA Dissidents’ Bomb Defused

British army experts safely defused a 500-pound car bomb Sunday outside a police barracks in Armagh. IRA dissidents claimed responsibility for planting it.

Also Sunday, police confirmed that two mortar shells and about 150 pounds of homemade explosives had been defused 110 miles southwest of Belfast, the provincial capital. Police discovered the arms Friday near an isolated shed within 500 yards of Northern Ireland’s border with the Irish Republic.

The threat in Armagh, 40 miles southwest of Belfast, was the latest effort to violate the Irish Republican Army’s July 1997 cease-fire. The IRA dissidents hope to encourage the north’s pro-British Protestant majority to vote “no” in the referendum Friday on the Northern Ireland peace accord.

Police said they spotted a Toyota packed with homemade explosives about 15 minutes before receiving a phoned warning. The caller mentioned the recognized code word used by breakaway IRA members, who continue to use the same name and have dubbed themselves RIRA, or “Real IRA.”