A SPLINTER group of the IRA last night exploded a bomb at a hotel in Northern Ireland, signalling its contempt for the peace process.
Tensions rose in the Province after the blast in County Fermanagh following a warning from the dissident Continuity IRA.
The bomb went off at the rear of Mahon's Hotel in Mill Street, Irvinestown. The blast started a fire, but there were no injuries.
Warnings of another bomb at the Manor House Hotel, at Killydeas, outside Enniskillen, forced its evacuation but police reported no explosion.
The RUC said a device was planted under an oil tank at the rear of Mahon's. As well as a fire, the explosion damaged walls and brought down ceilings. A number of cars were damaged.
Hotel owner Tommy Mahon said a phone call told them they had 20 minutes to clear the building. ''Fifteen minutes later the bomb went off.''
The attack brought condemnation from all sides of the political spectrum, from Downing Street to the Sinn Fein leadership.
Mr Ken Maginnis, the Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, revealed he was to visit the hotel this morning but predicted there would be no tit-for-tat retaliation. He told Sky News: ''I believe there will be very little reaction to this incident except in that the police on both sides of the frontier will be working to bring these people to justice.''
Mr Maginnis said he expected ''the odd bomb would get through'', but said such groups as the Continuity IRA ''cannot survive for long''. He added: ''There shall soon be no hiding place for these people if our community holds its head and people don't say and do things to incite them or give them justification.''
He told BBC News 24: ''I was to go there, to that very hotel, tomorrow morning to assist in the launch of a rural transport programme that was organised by ordinary local people for the benefit of the people of County Fermanagh. This programme is the very contradiction of what this small group of dissident people are about.''
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams added his voice to the clamour of condemnation and called on the Continuity IRA to disband. He said in Belfast: ''I unequivocally condemn this attack. The people involved are not acting in the interests of Irish republicanism, they are not representative of any real section of the Irish people and they should disband.''
Martin McGuinness, a Sinn Fein Minister in the Assembly, also condemned the bombing and said those who were responsible were not representative of the peace process. He also called on them to disband immediately.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson said: ''The people of Ireland, north and south, rejected violence once and for all when they overwhelmingly supported the Good Friday Agreement.''
The attack has highlighted the risk of breakaway Republicans launching a fresh campaign of violence.
Irvinestown lies south-west of Omagh, the town where a 500lb car bomb detonated by the Real IRA in August 1998 killed 29 people, the last and single deadliest bombing in the past three decades of conflict.
The Real IRA later called a ceasefire after a wave of revulsion swept through the Catholic and Protestant communities. The Continuity IRA is a small group which split from the IRA after the first ceasefire in 1994.
It is the only dissident republican paramilitary group not on ceasefire, regarding the Good Friday Agreement as a ''sell-out'' by republicans. The group is separate from the Real IRA.
The dissident warnings about Irvinestown and Killydeas were given to radio stations in Northern Ireland. However, they are be-lieved not to have used a recognised codeword.
The Irvinestown hotel, believed to be Catholic-owned, was then evacuated, the RUC said.
Ryan Williams, from Ir-vinestown, said he had thought their community was ''above and beyond'' being the target of any attack. ''For this to happen in a community of this nature, which
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