Blast near NI peer's estate

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Dissident republicans claimed responsibility for a blast close to the Northern Ireland estate of Unionist peer Lord Brookeborough.

The Continuity IRA said it had set off a bomb at Colebrooke, and police told CNN they had sealed off the area following a "loud bang" early on Wednesday morning.

Viscount Brookeborough was not on the estate on Wednesday but his mother told the Press Association news agency that the blast had been on a road outside the estate and near a church. No one had been injured, she said.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a Co. Fermanagh newspaper had received a call, accompanied by a recognised code word, alleging to be from the Continuity IRA and claiming responsibility for the attack.

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The republican group has rarely been active in the past couple of years but, when it is, tends to launch attacks in Co. Fermanagh which is on the border with the Irish Republic.

The police said later that nothing had been found immediately and a search for the site of the explosion was expected to carry on for two more days.

Meanwhile, there was a security alert at Belfast International Airport on Wednesday night. Police were searching the terminal building and car parks after a bomb warning, police told PA.

Passengers were warned there would be lengthy delays, but that they should turn up for flights as scheduled.

News of the Colebrooke attack was given to peers in Britain's House of Lords just before Prime Minister Tony Blair's statement warning paramilitaries to reject violence and adhere to cease-fire agreements laid down in the Good Friday peace deal. (Full story)

Leader of the Lords, Lord Williams of Mostyn told members: "I have been given quite recently some information which your lordships will want to know, which is that there was an attack with explosives on the property of Viscount Brookeborough."

Lord Brookeborough, an honorary colonel in the Territorial Army, is the son of the 1st Viscount who was Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1943 to 1963.

As Captain John Brooke he succeeded his father as member of the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont for Lisnaskea, Co. Fermanagh in 1968 and held the seat until the dissolution of the parliament in 1972 when direct rule from Britain was introduced.