Man arrested in Belfast in pipe bomb inquiry

A man has been arrested in the loyalist Shankill Road area of Belfast in Northern Ireland on suspicion of committing bomb offences…

A man has been arrested in the loyalist Shankill Road area of Belfast in Northern Ireland on suspicion of committing bomb offences.

He was detained during a series of house searches by detectives trying to clamp down on loyalists responsible for the continuing spate of pipe-bomb attacks on nationalist homes in the city.

The RUC says the man is being questioned about serious crime in north Belfast.

In Co Derry this morning a pipe bomb was defused by the British Army in the garden of a house.

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The device was found at the rear of the house at Shearwater Way in the Waterside area of the city when the householder got up in the morning.

Fourteen neighbouring houses were evacuated while British Army bomb disposal experts tackled the device.

Later the Army was investigating a suspect bomb found near the Orange Hall in Castlewellan, Co Down.

Meanwhile, two men injured in republican paramilitary shootings are still being questioned about the murder of a Protestant in the Shankill Road area earlier this month.

The men were shot in separate parts of west Belfast on Thursday and arrested the following day while in hospital.

They are being questioned about the murder of Mr David McDowell, who was beaten to death when he was attacked in the Shankill on August 16.

The 35-year-old had been moving furniture to a home he was moving into when he was set upon close to the peace line with nationalist west Belfast.

Police said at the time they did not know whether the killing was sectarian.