Northern Ireland police vehicle hit in suspected bomb attack

LONDON (AP) — Police in Northern Ireland say two officers escaped injury when their vehicle was damaged by a homemade bomb. The force says it is treating the attack as attempted murder. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a blast in Strabane on Thursday night “appears to have been a targeted attack on police.”  An assistant chief constable Bobby Singleton said Friday that “a strong line of inquiry” was whether an Irish Republican Army splinter group known as the New IRA was responsible. A 1998 peace agreement largely ended three decades of violence in Northern Ireland involving Irish republican and British loyalist paramilitary groups and U.K. security forces. IRA dissidents continue to mount occasional attacks.