LOYALIST SPLINTER GROUP the Real UFF has been blamed for leaving a viable pipe bomb in a primary school on Monday.

Brendan Shannon, an eight-year old schoolboy, was helping to deliver milk to classrooms in St Comgall’s Primary in Antrim with his twin sister Ciara when he spotted the device lying in the playground.

Brendan told the Telegraph:

I just got off my bike and just touched it to see if it was OK. Then I just lifted it up.

I didn’t know what it was. It was like a pipe with a screw and some wires were hanging out of it. Somebody told me afterwards it was a pipe bomb.

Brendan told a teacher what he had found, and the 400 children attending the school were evacuated to a nearby church while British bomb experts dealt with the device.

Explosives experts confirmed that the device had been viable.

The Real UFF have claimed responsibility for three similar bombs found near homes in Antrim last month.

Second alert

A phone warning led to a search at another school – St Joseph’s on the Greystone Road – shortly after 10.30am. Pupils at the school, including a nursery class, were evacuated.

However, no device was found at St Joseph’s.

The incident has provoked disgust across the political spectrum. Ulster Unionist South Antrim MLA Danny Kinahan said the alerts were “Disgusting and unjustifiable… Those who would plant a bomb – or even orchestrate a hoax – at a school are beneath contempt.”

Sinn Féin Education Minister Caitríona Ruane said; “Whoever caused these alerts must be strongly condemned for putting lives at risk.”

Mixed school

St Comgall’s Primary is attended by mostly Catholic children but also has Protestant pupils.

Brendan’s mother, Siobhan, told The Irish News: “Whoever planted this bomb doesn’t seem to realise that the school is mixed with both Catholics and Protestants. It could have easily have killed a Protestant child as a Catholic”.

“The people who left that device probably have kids of their own,” she continued “Have they no conscience?”

The Shannon family had only returned to the North recently, after moving to Australia in the 1980s.

“We moved to Australia because my parents didn’t want their kids growing up surrounded by hatred,” Siobhan said, “Brendan was actually born in Australia. We only moved back home because we thought  things had changed for the better.”