It exploded outside a courthouse in Newry, County Down, Northern Ireland, damaging the building and others in the area.

Seventeen minutes before it exploded, a telephone warning was received saying it was in the centre of Newry and would go off in half an hour.

[2] According to Fachtna Murphy, Commissioner of the Garda Síochána, this was "the first bomb that exploded in the North in 10 or 11 years.

[10] A 45-year-old man was jailed in 2017 for being a member of the IRA, because of DNA evidence he left on the car bomb.

[2] The Newry car bombing is taken as evidence that "hardline Republicans" continue to have the ability to carry out terror attacks in Northern Ireland,[12] although they no longer have the operational strength to do so in Britain itself.

[12][16] The operational strength of dissident republican groups as demonstrated by this bombing continues to concern Irish security forces as of September 2010.

"[17] Politically, the attack was alleged by the Belfast Telegraph to have led some loyalists "to believe the older leadership called it wrong—that they decommissioned far too soon.