Police say car explodes outside courthouse in Northern Ireland; no injuries initially reported

NIreland police: Car explodes outside courthouse

LONDON — A suspected car bomb exploded late Monday outside a courthouse in Northern Ireland, police said, but there were no initial reports of injuries.

A police spokeswoman said the car exploded at about 10 p.m. local time as officers in the town of Newry were in the process of evacuating “a few people” from the area after they received reports of a suspicious vehicle abandoned outside the building.

The spokeswoman said no details were immediately available. No organization claimed responsibility, but Irish Republican Army dissidents have been blamed for recent attacks.

The explosion came just days after a homemade mortar was left outside a police station in a nearby town in an attack blamed on IRA dissidents.

A van containing the mortar weapon was abandoned before sunrise Friday in the predominantly Catholic border town of Keady in the traditional IRA power base of South Armagh.

Most IRA members renounced violence and disarmed in 2005, but two factions — the Real IRA and Continuity IRA — continue to mount occasional attacks in opposition to Northern Ireland’s peace process. They have repeatedly targeted police in South Armagh in recent months but to little effect.