World Notes

Despite the high security imposed in England during the gulf war, the Irish Republican Army last week managed to set off bombs in two of London's main train stations. One pre-dawn explosion at Paddington station did little damage. But a second blast in a trash can at Victoria station during the morning rush hour killed one man and injured 46 other persons. The attacks set off a burst of hoax calls and bottled up nearly 500,000 metropolitan commuters. Coming only 11 days after the I.R.A. lobbed mortar shells at 10 Downing Street, the bombings aim at sustaining the terrorists' claim that they can and will bring dislocation to England just as they do in Northern Ireland.

% The blasts signaled not only an intensification of the organization's drive to oust the British from Northern Ireland but also a return to the tactics of the 1970s when civilian targets, including train and subway stations, were hit indiscriminately. That strategy was abandoned after a 1983 car bomb outside Harrods department store killed six people and caused a wave of revulsion against the I.R.A. But authorities fear that frustrated hard-liners have once again decided that bloody activity on the mainland is a far more effective way to prove that British rule in Ireland is untenable.