RESIDENTS of a housing estate in Rathangan had to be evacuated after a pipe bomb was left in front of one of the homes.
Army bomb disposal experts were then called out to defuse the device, which was discovered at a house in the Temple Mills estate.
Local gardaí were notified of the discovery through the Garda Control and Command system in Dublin at around ….pm last
Thursday night and they proceeded to evacuate the residents of the house in question and those occupying neighbouring houses.
“This was a viable device which was left under a bench outside the front window of the house in question,” said Sgt John Flaherty of Kildare garda station.
Members of the Defence Forces’ Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team then moved in to make the device safe. “In fact, although they deemed it to be technically viable, it didn’t actually explode,” said Sgt Flaherty.
He went on to say that the gardaí are continuing their investigations into the incident, adding that the matter was a very serious one as the house in question was occupied at the time, as were adjacent homes.
“We are still trying to establish a motive for what could have been an extremely serious attack,” Sgt Flaherty said, adding that anybody who noticed any suspicous movements of vehicles or people in the area on Thursday evening, or who has any information about the incident, should contact Kildare garda station on … …….
The Temple Mills estate is one of the Rathangan area’s newer housing private housing developments, which is located on the Bracknagh road.
This is not the first occasion on which pipe bombs have been used to target homes in Co Kildare. A similar device was actually shoved through the letter-box of a house in Suncroft in July, while manufacturing and storage facilities for pipebombs have also been discovered in the county.
A bomb-making factory was discovered near Monasterevin in January of …. while in May of this year, five viable pipe bombs were discovered in a bogland area just outside Rathangan.
At the time, gardaí linked the find to Dublin gangland activities, claiming that the pipe bombs were destined for use in the city.
