IRA Uses Flash Gun to Kill Officer by Remote Control

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The Irish Republican Army used a camera flash gun to trigger by remote control a mortar that killed a Northern Ireland policewoman, security officials said Wednesday.

The security officials said that an IRA guerrilla fired a flash gun across the canal in the border town of Newry on Saturday night. This triggered a photosensitive “slave unit” hidden behind the windshield of a car in which the mortar was concealed.

The slave unit in turn set off a charge in the mortar, firing a projectile that pierced the armor plating on a passing patrol car, killing the policewoman and blasting the legs off her colleague who is in serious condition in a hospital.

The IRA, fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland, has often used wires stretched across country roads to trigger mortar attacks in remote rural areas. This is the first time the IRA has killed anyone with the new remote trigger system set up to thwart electronic jamming by British security forces.