Irish FM taken off stage in Belfast after security alert

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was taken off stage by officials during a speech in Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK) on Friday after the event organizer said a suspicious device had been discovered in a hijacked van in the car park of the venue, Report informs via Reuters.

The van driver was ordered at gunpoint to drive to the venue in north Belfast, one of the event's organizers told Reuters. Coveney was driven away from the venue in his government car after leaving the stage, a Reuters journalist at the scene said.

"There is a security alert and the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) are currently assessing the situation. Everyone has had to evacuate the centre," Tim Attwood, secretary of the Hume Foundation, the event organizer, told Reuters.

A spokesperson for Coveney said the minister and his team were safe and had been taken to a secure location.

The PSNI said police are currently in attendance at the scene where a 400-metre (yard) exclusion zone was put in place.

The incident comes three days after the United Kingdom lowered its Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat level for the first time in more than a decade, with police saying operations against Irish nationalist militants were making attacks less likely.

A small group of militants opposed to a 1998 peace deal that ended Northern Ireland's "Troubles" remain active and carry out occasional attacks.

Their capacity is tiny relative to the three-decade conflict between Irish nationalists seeking unification with the Irish Republic and the British Army and pro-British loyalists determined to keep Northern Ireland under British rule.

Britain's Northern Ireland Minister Brandon Lewis said he was being kept up to date on the incident. "Solidarity with Simon Coveney and all those impacted," Lewis said on Twitter.