This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Police in Northern Ireland have discovered an arms and explosives cache thought to belong to republican dissident terrorists opposed to the peace process.

Almost half a kilogram of semtex explosive was found during a raid by armed police officers at a house in west Belfast, it was confirmed on Friday.

The security operation late on Thursday night at a house in the republican Ballymurphy district also uncovered two detonators, two handguns and 200 rounds of ammunition.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a 38-year-old woman and a 67-year-old man had been arrested after the searches on Ballymurphy Road.

The pair were photographed at the scene being led into a PSNI armoured vehicle dressed in white forensic boiler suits. They were taken to the serious crimes suite at Antrim police station for questioning.

A number of homes in the republican district had to be evacuated during the security operation. The PSNI said the operation was part of an investigation into “violent dissident terrorist activity.”

DCI Gillian Kearney said: “We are delighted to have removed these potentially lethal items from the streets of west Belfast. We appreciate the clearance operation which was needed to ensure everyone’s safety through the night disrupted many people’s lives, requiring people to leave their homes and inconveniencing road users.

“We would like to thank them for their patience and understanding during the operation. We will continue to work with the community to ensure we keep everyone safe.”

The capture of the weaponry, particularly the semtex, will be regarded as a major disruption to armed dissident republican activity in the greater Belfast area.

Semtex, first supplied by Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya to the Provisional IRA in the 1980s, has been used in numerous terrorist atrocities and high-profile bombing attacks including the explosions that devastated part of the City of London in the early 1990s from the Bishopsgate bomb to Canary Wharf.

The discovery of the semtex will raise questions from unionist politicians about whether the Czech-made explosive came from a cache of the PIRA’s huge terror arsenal that was meant to have been decommissioned a decade ago.

The location of the weapons is also significant given Ballymurphy’s history as a republican stronghold during the Troubles. The area was the home of Gerry Adams’s family as well as the district from which many of the PIRA’s most militant fighters in the conflict emerged.



While most people in Ballymurphy are strongly pro-Sinn Féin and support the peace process there is a small network of family-related dissident republicans operating in the area.