Irish police have uncovered a suspected dissident republican arms dump containing mortars and AK-47 rifles close to the border with Northern Ireland.
The Garda Síochána said on Tuesday that the searches in the Scotstown area of County Monaghan also found detonators, detonating cord and components for improvised explosive devices.
Gardai have yet to reveal the exact quantity of weapons and explosives parts unearthed in the operation involving specialist anti-terrorist officers, the force’s armed emergency response unit, dog handlers and local gardaí.
The searches are linked to the arrest of a 43-year-old man in the same area last week. Jim Smyth, from near Scotstown, which is about a mile from the Northern Ireland border, was charged with IRA membership at the non-jury special criminal court in Dublin last Saturday.
The gardaí search, which is still ongoing, is the second major security operation directed at anti-ceasefire hardline republicans on the island over the last seven days.
Last Tuesday, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) revealed it had seized 700 rounds of ammunition, seven mercury tilt switches used to set off bombs, detonating cord, an assault rifle and firework powder during searches in the Twinbrook area of west Belfast the previous weekend.
The items recovered were part of a weapons haul the PSNI feared might be used for a pre-Christmas terror campaign in Belfast.
Although police on each side of the border have inflicted damage on the arsenals of the anti-peace process republican groups, the armed dissidents demonstrated their lethal capabilities last Thursday when they came close to killing two PSNI officers in west Belfast.
A single gunman armed with an assault rifle fired up to eight rounds at the officers’ vehicle. The policemen escaped injury only because the unmarked car they were sitting in was heavily fortified with bulletproof armour
