The World - News from Sept. 9, 1988

An IRA bomb exploded outside a police station in Coagh, Northern Ireland, wounding at least 12 people, severely damaging the building and forcing the evacuation of more than 100 residents, police said. The wounded include five officers and at least seven residents of the village of 250 people, 30 miles west of Belfast, police said. They said two elderly people suffered heart attacks as a result of the blast. The bomb, placed in a van outside the station, exploded less than two minutes after local authorities received a warning call at 9:30 p.m. The outlawed Irish Republican Army is fighting a guerrilla war to drive the British out of the predominantly Protestant province and unite it with the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Republic of Ireland.