Belfast police mount road checkpoints to deter IRA bombers after failed shopping-mall attack

A view of the Victoria Square Shopping complex in the centre of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Monday, Nov. 25, 2013. A suspected Irish Republican Army car bomb targeting Belfast’s biggest shopping center has failed to detonate. But police say the driver ordered to deliver the bomb was been traumatized, and security in the Northern Ireland capital is being increased in the run-up to Christmas. Police evacuated a cinema, restaurants and apartments connected to the Victoria Square complex after the car containing about 130 pounds (60 kilograms) of homemade explosive was abandoned Sunday night at the entrance to the shopping center’s underground parking lot. The alert snarled rush-hour traffic Monday. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) (The Associated Press)

Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Matt Baggott speaks to the media at PSNI Headquarters, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Monday, Nov. 25, 2013. A suspected Irish Republican Army car bomb targeting Belfast’s biggest shopping center has failed to detonate. But police say the driver ordered to deliver the bomb was been traumatized, and security in the Northern Ireland capital is being increased in the run-up to Christmas. Police evacuated a cinema, restaurants and apartments connected to the Victoria Square complex after the car containing about 130 pounds (60 kilograms) of homemade explosive was abandoned Sunday night at the entrance to the shopping center’s underground parking lot. The alert snarled rush-hour traffic Monday. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) (The Associated Press)

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Northern Ireland's police are heightening security in Belfast, deploying roadblocks to deter car bombs, following the first such failed attack on the capital in a decade.

Sunday's 130-pound (60-kilogram) bomb failed to detonate under Belfast's biggest, glitziest shopping center.

Police commanders and security analysts warn that Irish Republican Army splinter groups opposed to a 1997 cease-fire are increasing their bombing efforts in the run-up to Christmas. Several small bombs planted recently in Belfast and Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city, all have failed to detonate.

Belfast's mayor, a former supporter of IRA violence, says the truce-breakers "want to wreck Christmas." He says Tuesday's crowds of shoppers show "the rest of us aren't going to let them."

Most IRA members from the dominant faction, the Provisionals, renounced violence in 2005.