Car bomb officer out of intensive care

Constable Peadar Heffron, 33, is no longer in a critical condition and he has moved onto the next stage of his treatment, a spokesperson for the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust told UTV.

A spokeswoman for the PSNI said the recently married officer was in a stable condition but remains seriously ill.

The captain of the PSNI's GAA team had to have his right leg amputated after a device exploded under his car seat near his home on the Milltown road, Randalstown, as he was making his way to work in January.

The explosion happened two miles from the Massereene Army barracks, where two soldiers just about to leave for Afghanistan were shot dead by the Real IRA last March.

It is the latest in a series of attacks by dissidents and was virtually identical to one close to the PSNI headquarters, in which an officer's girlfriend narrowly escaped death last October.