LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland -- IRA guerrillas stormed a British coal freighter off the fog-shrouded Irish coast Tuesday, forced the crew to abandon ship and sank it with explosives in the second such attack in a year.
None of the 10 crewmen aboard the 1,600-ton St. Bedan was harmed, Londonderry police said. They reached a nearby pier just as the explosions rocked their boat.
'About 10 men armed with rifles and handguns boarded the craft and forced the crew into a lifeboat at about 12:30 this morning, then set explosives which sank the boat in shallow water,' a police spokesman said.
Within 30 minutes of the blast, the Glasgow-based vessel used for carrying coal between the British mainland and Northern Ireland was at the bottom of the Lough Foyle, the international waterway separating the republic from the British province.
The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement from Belfast.
The vessel was the second British freighter sunk in a year. The Nellie M., a Liverpool coal boat, was scuttled by IRA gunmen last year in the lough.
'This was an appalling incident and the fact that it had happened in exactly the same way once before makes it even worse,' said Alastair Struthers, spokesman for the Glasgow shipowners J. and A. Gardner.
The St. Bedan was anchored in the Lough Foyle, 5 miles northeast of Londonderry, when the gunmen surprised the crew.
Police said the men had raided a pilot station and ordered a pilot boat crew to ferry them to the St. Bedan, using the cover of fog and darkness.
The captain suspected nothing at first, Struthers said.
'Then as they boarded, they (the crew) were amazed to see these armed men who pushed guns into the backs of their heads and ordered them not to move.'
The crew reached shore in a life raft. The gunmen rode the pilot boat back to shore and escaped in several cars, police said.
