A POLICE officer is seriously ill but stable in a Belfast hospital following a customs operation to counter tobacco smuggling on the Armagh-Louth border. Another officer was less seriously injured and was discharged from hospital last night.
The officers, who were supporting a revenue and customs operation, were hurt when a van was driven at them at speed at a commercial warehouse on Low Road, outside the village of Meigh at 12.45pm yesterday. About seven million cigarettes have been recovered worth more than £1 million and officers are investigating a lorry which was lying on its side a short distance from the scene.
The officers where struck and carried for a distance along the isolated road which runs parallel to the nearby Belfast-Dublin railway. They had been investigating the scene when the vehicle apparently smashed through a warehouse door from the inside in an attempt to get away.
The seriously ill officer was air lifted for treatment in nearby Daisy Hill hospital in Newry before being transferred to Belfast where he underwent surgery.
The PSNI said two males, one aged 17 and another 39, had been arrested and were being questioned. It is understood that those arrested were on foot at the time and were not driving the vehicle which hit the police officers. An unknown number of others thought to be involved in the smuggling operation are being sought by the PSNI and the Garda.
Newry and Armagh SDLP Assembly member Dominic Bradley said: “Two men were arrested at the scene but a number escaped and An Garda Síochána recovered a van shortly afterwards about a mile away in Dromad.”
Insp David Beck, PSNI sector commander for the south Armagh region, said last night there “was no doubt” that those in the van tried to kill the officers. “Clearly their intent was to escape and they had no regard at all for the lives of these police officers or indeed anyone else in the area.
“We have a number of very live lines of inquiry and the Garda are assisting us in our inquiries.”
He denied south Armagh remained an area where normal policing remained challenged by criminal and paramilitary gangs.
“Our officers were on the ground with other agencies following up on potential crime.”
SDLP councillor Geraldine Donnelly, who is also a member of the local District Policing Partnership, said she believed dissident republican activity in the area hampered police efforts against smuggling. “The police are doing the job with one hand tied behind their back because of the dissident threat.”
Unionist victims campaigner William Frazer said criminal gangs and dissident republicans fed off each other. “Until the proper resources are put in, this problem will not go away,” he said.