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FOUR PEOPLE HAVE been hospitalised, three with serious injuries, following separate crashes in Co Clare.
Emergency services from three counties responded to incidents involving a total of five vehicles on the M18 at Dromoland at around 10.30pm last night.
The crashes, which occurred following a heavy downpour of hailstone, resulted in both sides of the motorway being closed.
Gardaí responded to the scene followed by a number of National Ambulance Service resources from Limerick and Clare as well as units of Clare County Fire and Rescue Service from Ennis and Shannon stations.
Additional support was requested from Galway Fire and Rescue Service who dispatched two units from Gort station.
Ambulance paramedics assessed a number of people at the scene before two people, a woman and a man, were taken to University Hospital Limerick for further treatment.
The collisions happened at the same time and location and across all four lanes of the motorway about 500m south of the Dromoland interchange.
Three vehicles lost control and crashed in the southbound lanes of the M18 while on the other side of the motorway, two more cars crashed.
It’s understood that a man who had gotten out of one of the cars was then struck by another car travelling in the same direction.
The man is believed to have suffered serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
The southbound lanes of the motorway were reopened about an hour after the collisions occurred.
The northbound lanes remained closed however for a further hour while emergency services and Traffic Infrastructure Ireland (TII) motorway crews cleared debris from the road and the vehicles were safely recovered.
Arrangements were also made to have the motorway gritted as temperatures dropped and further wintry showers were expected.
Meanwhile, soon after the motorway incident had been cleared, emergency services were mobilised to a serious road traffic collision outskirts of Ennis.
Multiple Garda units responded to the scene along with two ambulances and a rapid response advanced paramedic unit.
Fire crews from Clare County Fire and Rescue Service from Ennis and Shannon stations also responded to the scene.
Two men were seriously injured in the two-car head-on collision which happened shortly before 1.00am on the main N68 Ennis to Kilrush road at Kilmorane. One of the vehicles was a taxi however the driver wasn’t carrying a fare at the time.
It’s understood the driver of the second car was also travelling alone. Fire crews had to use specialist cutting equipment to help release one of the drivers from the wreckage of his vehicle. Both men were taken by ambulance to University Hospital Limerick for treatment.
Gardaí at Ennis are appealing to anyone who witnessed either incident to contact them. Gardaí are also asking anyone with dashcam footage to make it available. Ennis Garda Station can be contacted on 065 6848100.
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I think it’s about time someone took a hard line with Iran, they clearly don’t know how to maximise the profits from their oil reserves. Fair play to the Don I say.
@Graham Wilson: Graham give your phone back to a grown up and go to bed you clown.
@Graham Wilson: if trump causes war with Iran, I personally couldn’t defend him anymore. There’s taking a hard line, and then stupidity.
Sorry guys, I was being sarcastic about another Oil War by the Republicans.
@Graham Wilson: I had forgotten Obama was a Republican when he destroyed Libya.
@Shane Dignam: you might have a point if Trump wasn’t a republican. Nowhere did Graham say Democrats haven’t done it too.
@Dave O’Keeffe: He’s neither in any case. Just using them.
@Nathan Mawhinney: why and on what would defend him now?
@Shane Dignam: Obamwahwahwah
Weapons of mass destruction
Short war
No boots on the ground
Regime change
Now where have I heard all this before???
Afghanistan
iraq
Libya
Syria
Somalia
Look at the state of the places now after “American democracy”
@Liam O hAodha: kosovo are grateful for their help. West Berlin too. If you pick a power nation we can probably say what atrocities they done, england, russia. History must be shown to them so they dont repeat it but its rarely a good argument just to list them
@Stephen Coveney: Kosovo are happy for their help – are they? Only the Albanian immigrants are the happy ones I’d imagine. The actual ethnic Kosovars wouldn’t be so. Explaining this to you Anglophiles would take too much of my time though.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin:
What a
@Cormac Ó Braonáin:
What are you talking about? What do you even mean by ‘ethnic Kosovars’?? The population of Kosovo has always been made up of various ethnicities including Albanian, Serbian, Bosniak, Roma, Turk etc..
There is no such thing as ‘ethnic Kosovan’, just affiliation with one of the ethnic heritages living within Kosovo. Albanian Kosovars have made up the majority of the population for many years.
Your comment smacks of someone who’s trying to make political capital for whatever reason, but who is absolutely clueless.
I’ve met Iranian people. Spoken with them, studied with them. Kind, respectful people often badly represented by their leaders. Trump’s typically ignorant assessment of Iran is repugnant. ‘Knowledge is unnecessary,.’ Dialogue is the only way forward.
@Wood Jackson: 100%, great article in The Irish Times today on how Trump has destroyed over 30 years of careful diplomacy since becoming President https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-back-channel-brutally-frank-assessment-of-trump-s-wrecking-job-on-us-diplomacy-1.3919935
@Wood Jackson: i cannot get over how Trump pulled the US out of the treaty, which the Iranians were living up to – by all accounts, seemingly just because it was one of Obama’s policies. This Trump idiot just wants to bring down whatever Obama did, whatever the cost – and to all you trump supporting bottom kissers – just remember the birther movement trump was involved with before he was running for office – Trump is obsessed with Obama and will bring the world to war to try and destroy Obama’s legacy
@Wood Jackson: ive met with American people and they are the most hospitable and generous i found travelling the world. But i agree that their government have escalated everything since being in power. Do not try to paint Iran as innocent bystanders though
@Stephen Coveney: have you met any Iranians by any chance, Stephen?
A fanatical Islamic state is something the whole world can definitively do without. However it would be difficult to overthrow the regime without mass deaths. Saudi Arabia is actually worse than Iran but they’ve played their cards well, Iran hasn’t.
@Windom Earle: I agree with everything you’ve said but, given that Saudi Arabia is so much worse, can we also agree that America’s priorities are tainted by corruption?
@Windom Earle: When Iran starts blown other countries to bits and shoving they rubbish down my kneck then I’ll start towing the line!!
@Windom Earle: Iran has no extraterritorial ambitions other than self protection and protection of other Shia populations. Unlike the USA which is acting here only as a proxy for the Israel-Saudi axis
@Windom Earle: you do know how the Shah got into power and what 2 foreign countries eradicated democracy in Iran, right? I’ll give you a clue – they’re the same 2 foreign countries that have been roaming the world going from country to country demanding ‘regime change’ for a very long time, and now they’re back on Iran’s borders doing it again.
@De20: Bang on the money, it’s bizarre that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, yet the current U.S. President Donald Trump crawls on his knees to worship them in Riyadh. Also in 1967 Israel attacked the USS Liberty murdering 34 American crew members on board in international waters, yet the Trump Administration lick their boots? Sounds about as treasonous as you can get to me.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin: America and Russia?
If Trump’s poll numbers start to drop in the run up to 2020 election, would he start a war with Iran?
@Mushy Peas: yep
@Mushy Peas: remember both Trump and Clinton going head-to-head on stage, threatening to go to war with country after country to garner votes. Their teams knew exactly what the American people want and that is WAR. War, war, and more war. The problem here isn’t the politicians, it’s the American people. They’re absolutely obsessed with war. Look at their history. They’re possibly the most war-like nation/people that have ever existed in ratio to their existence.
@Mushy Peas: Not if he wants to keep his base happy.
@Mushy Peas: I cannot see his numbers dropping. He is running against a bunch of Democrats who are rather boring No clear leader in the pack. The only way trump will lose is if the dems can dig up some dirt on him and impeach him.
@Cormac Ó Braonáin: can you clarify which countries they threatened to go to war with? Because you come across as someone who knows very little
@Paul F. White: …boring is exactly what America should be voting for
@Stephen Coveney: Hillary Clinton said her mission was to bring Syria to the same place as Syria and said that she was willing to go to war with Russia to achieve it.
@Cal Mooney:
That’s not what she said.
I suspect Trump will start a war some time soon, because he wants to run for a second term.
IMO, denuking Iran would be fair if the entire ME was rid of nukes.
This would mean Israel giving up its nukes and all nuclear capable ships, subs and planes excluded from the zone.
At present, US pressure on Iran’s leadership since the Shah was debunked has led Iran
(Like North Korea) to go on the nuke path for self-protection.
Note: The US did not say bugger all to a nuclear Pakistan for harbouring Islamic terrorism & Osama bin Laden.The untended US message seems to be “nuke up and Uncle Sam wont touch you”
Hmm.. According to the Washington Post, The USA is planning to restart underground nuclear testing. I have a geiger counter and will be able to measure the radioactive plumes on the west coast of Ireland.
I am surprised that the journal did nt mention yesterdays UN meeting on the subject. Towards the end the Iranian spokesman mentioned that because of sanctions Iran cannot move the Enriched Uranium because of the US sanctions.
He also mentioned that sanctions are causing a young girl who needs medicine for her breathing after the Iraq gas attacks on the Iranian border (Gas supplied by supporters of Saddam ) to be unavailable.
And for complete hypocrisy highly Enriched Uranium (Over 90 percent) is on the open market and about 20 kilos was actually seized by police in Mumbai from terrorist sources. The value of this material was in the millions and the funding maybe came from ISIS in the levant when they sold the oil (That Russia eventually stopped).
I called on of the links “depleted uranium” instead of HEU to limit the reach of the story.
An interesting report here;
“Highly Enriched Uranium, a Dangerous Substance that Should Be Eliminated
“…. Furthermore, it is more difficult to detect by technical means. Therefore, in comparison to plutonium, HEU is much easier to divert, smuggle and hide. Moreover, a crude nuclear explosive made of HEU can be constructed in a much simpler way than one made using plutonium. For these reasons, HEU is the material most wanted by terrorists. A few tens of kilograms are sufficient for one explosive, but the quantities existing in the world add up to hundreds of tons…..” https://www.hsfk.de/fileadmin/HSFK/hsfk_downloads/prif124.pdf
I also posit the kiloton damage with 20 kilos of HEU (had it got out further into the wild).
https://europeannewsweekly.wordpress.com/2017/01/28/a-special-team-to-secure-the-bengali-republic-day-parade-from-nuclear-and-chemical-threats/
Point to note that making the HEU go critical (with a low kiloton yield described in the other linked article) is a simple matter and can be done with some basic tools found in most workshops and thats why the German report linked above is so concerned in its reporting.
In 1914 they said that it (First World War) would be over by Christmas. Many millions of men were dead by the time it ended in 1918….
What the Iran government is doing to its people is a extreme dictatorship. The poor are getting poorer and rich are getting richer. They are run by Islam extremists, so woman are force in bad relationship, mosque are abusing there power against humanity .. and we think Catholic Church is bad.
As Iran has more wealth than Saudi and UAE meaning dubai therfore if trump goes to war they would blow both countries out of it.As America are allies with both of these countries we will up with World War 3.
have your say