Police in Northern Ireland have warned that the risk of officers being ambushed by dissident republicans could slow their response times to emergencies.

It follows an incident early on Saturday morning in the Tullygally Road area of Craigavon, County Armagh, when officers were targeted with explosives while responding to a call from a member of the public.

The police were contacted shortly after the incident by a Belfast-based newspaper which had received a call claiming that a device had been used to target the response patrol.

Image: Police may be slow to respond to incidents in Northern Ireland due to ambush fears

Officers and army bomb disposal experts were deployed to the scene where a suspicious object was found and later identified as a viable explosive.

Images of the devices released by the police appear to show an artillery shell and a concrete block with bags over them placed close to a public bus stop.


Detective superintendent Richard Campbell said: "The entire incident was staged in order to bring police into an area where another deadly and unstable device awaited.

"Although the explosive was designed and set up to look like a fired mortar, it was in fact a booby-trap device.

"In other words it was designed to explode if moved or touched."

Parts of Craigavon have been rife with such activity in the past, with renegades opposed to the peace process having killed soldiers, prison workers and police officers.

The chairman of the Police Federation for Northern Ireland (PFNI) Mark Lindsay said: "Tullygally was a vicious attempt to murder colleagues who were responding to a call from a member of the public.

"In fact, it was a come-on, a deliberate attempt to lure them to a place where republican terrorists could mount their ambush.

"The officers in the vehicle escaped injury or death, and for that the police 'family' is hugely grateful.

"Officers operating in particular areas already exercise great caution. They are forced to risk assess and evaluate, and that, unfortunately, can lead to delays in responding to genuine calls from the public."

Investigators believe the ambush formed part of a failed bid to kill members of the force, which also forced 20 people - including a pensioner aged 80 - to be removed from their homes.

Saturday's attack is the fifth from dissident republicans in Northern Ireland this year, including the murder of 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee.

Mr Lindsay said that officers are not expected to leave themselves vulnerable to terrorist attacks and that caution suggested "the very real prospect of slower response times".

The PFNI chairman called on politicians and community leaders to "up their game considerably" and work with the police to tackle the dissident republicans, whom he described as "thugs and criminals".

Image: Dissident republicans have been accused of the attack

The chief superintendent of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Peter Farrar, said: "Attacks on police and other security services are attacks on the entire community and they are an attack on our democracy.

"Clearly this was a lethal device designed to murder police officers or indeed any member of the public, whether they be an older person or a child who would have been in the vicinity of this.

"Anyone willing to launch such an attack in a residential area cares little about our communities. Their reckless violence cannot be allowed to continue."