2010 Newry car bombing

The 2010 Newry car bombing occurred on the night of 22 February 2010. A car bomb exploded outside a courthouse in Newry, Northern Ireland. The car bomb damaged the courthouse and other buildings in the area. There were no fatalities or injuries.

The incident happened late at night. Seventeen minutes before the bomb exploded a telephone warning was received saying that a car bomb was somewhere in the centre of Newry and that it would go off in half an hour. The police removed people from their homes and the centre of the town. The car was a Mazda 6 loaded with 115 kg of explosives. The car exploded next to the gates of a courthouse. The bomb was felt and heard from two miles away. The bomb blast damaged the courthouse and other buildings in the area. A 170-year-old church had its windows blown out; three people were inside the church when the bomb exploded, but they were uninjured. The bombers phoned in a warning that police should clear the area because a bomb would go off in 30 minutes, in fact it went off in 17 minutes. Because of the size of the bomb, the police termed it a "sheer miracle" that no one was injured.

According to the BBC, it is thought that this was the first "large car bomb" to have exploded in Northern Ireland since the 2000 bombing of the Stewartstown police station. Other car bombs have failed to explode, or have only partially exploded.

The bombing is thought to have been an attempt to undo the 2010 Hillsborough Castle Agreement, although the fact that it came two weeks after the Agreement was signed is thought to reflect the militant's limited operational capacity.

According to Fachtna Murphy, Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, this was "the first bomb that exploded in the North in 10 or 11 years."

The next day the area was sealed off as police investigated. Shops were closed and traffic backed up on the motorway between Newry and Belfast. The large explosion caused "traffic chaos" across the city.

The Real Irish Republican Army was blamed for the bombing in Newry but on 27 May a 32-year-old man was arrested for the bombing. A day before that a 51-year-old man appeared in the same court charged with the car bombing.

Hillary Clinton, the American Secretary of State, condemned the bombing but insisted that it would "not destabilise the peace process".