Northern Irish police have made an arrest after the nationalist group New IRA claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a Belfast police station. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said Tuesday that a 66-year-old man was arrested under the UK's Terrorism Act, with searches ongoing in east and west Belfast.

Sectarian pressures have been building recently in the UK-controlled territory, 28 years after a political agreement ended decades of violence. No one was injured in Saturday's blast, which occurred after a delivery vehicle was hijacked and the driver forced to drive to Dunmurry police station.

The New IRA declared on Tuesday that it had intended to kill police coming out of the station, according to local outlet Irish News, and warned that it planned to target officers at their homes with bombs. The group typically claims responsibility for attacks in coded statements to local newspapers.

Assistant Chief Constable Davy Beck said the latest attack demonstrated a clear intent to disrupt communities and potentially injure or kill police officers and staff, according to Reuters. The New IRA is one of a small number of active armed groups that oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which stipulates Northern Ireland remains part of the UK unless a majority votes to unite with the Republic of Ireland.

The dissident group has been behind a mounting series of attacks on police, including a similar attempted car bombing at a police station outside Belfast last month. Targeting officers at their homes would be an escalation. The last officer killed in Northern Ireland, Constable Ronan Kerr, died when a bomb exploded under his car outside his home 15 years ago.

Source: www.aljazeera.com