'What kind of people would do this?' Priest hits out as Belfast funeral halted in bomb alert

A priest has hit out after a funeral had to be halted because of a bomb scare.

UTV understands a white van was hijacked in the Tennent Street area of north Belfast with the driver held at gunpoint.

What's believed was a cannister was put in the back and the driver then told to go to the Houban Centre on Belfast's Crumlin Road. It is in the grounds of Holy Cross Church.

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney was giving a speech at a peace-building event in the centre. He was pulled out by his security team mid-way through his keynote address.

He stopped and told those in the audience he had to leave and hoped to be back in a few minutes.

Father Gary Donegan who was at the event, told UTV a funeral was due to take place 20 minutes before they were told to evacuate.

He said: “Minister Simon Coveney was addressing the crowd when a man had been kidnapped and forced to drive something into the grounds and then we had to immediately evacuate the Houban Centre, the church grounds and the monastery of which there is an elderly sick priest in that house.

“We have had six funerals this week in Ardoyne and one was just about to start 20 minutes away. This funeral might have to be cancelled.

“We are disrupted, things can be rescheduled but a funeral...ironically someone being laid to rest in peace and we have this.”

“To turn round at an event…to force an innocent person to drive a vehicle into a consecrated ground that could name or kill somebody... I mean what kind of people or mindset would actually do something like that?"