The main motorway linking Belfast to Dublin has been reopened after a bomb alert temporarily closed the M1 at the end of one of the bloodiest and most active periods of dissident republican violence in almost a year.
While the Police Service of Northern Ireland has allowed motorists to again use the M1 between the two cities after the security shut down earlier on Saturday, their counterparts across the border are still hunting for the chief suspect in a murder that took place in Derry on Thursday morning.
Armed Garda Síochána officers almost intercepted the ex-Real IRA prisoner Kieran McLaughlin at a farmhouse in Co Donegal late on Friday night. While they surrounded a barn in Burnfoot just across the border from Derry it is understood that the 58-year-old veteran republican had fled from the area only an hour earlier.
McLaughlin is wanted for questioning about the murder on Thursday morning of Barry McGrory at a flat in Derry city centre. The PSNI took the unprecedented step of naming McLaughlin as the chief suspect in the killing of the father of four. An all-Ireland manhunt is still under way to track down McLaughlin, who has served several prison sentences for the Real IRA and, earlier, the Irish National Liberation Army.
Meanwhile the PSNI are still questioning a 39-year-old man arrested in west Belfast on Friday over the murder of Kevin Kearney, whose body was found dumped in a lake in a public park on Wednesday. The dissident republican New IRA admitted responsibility for murdering Kearney.
As well being behind two murders, dissident republicans were also responsible for a series of bomb alerts across Belfast and Derry over the last week.
The New IRA also tried to fire a mortar bomb device at Derry's main police station at Strand Road on Friday but the attack was thwarted after a huge security operation in the city that at one stage forced 1,000 people out of their homes.
The planned attack on the station had been designed to coincide with the opening of an international investment conference in Belfast, which was attended by David Cameron.
The latest security alert caused traffic chaos and disruption to the lives of those in nearby homes, and was condemned by the SDLP's Fearghal McKinney.
He said: "There have been a number of security alerts in Belfast in the past week and there has been a hugely negative impact on not only traffic movement around the city but more importantly
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