A hijacked van caused a security alert in which Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was taken off stage by officials during a speech in Belfast on Friday. The area was evacuated. The driver was ordered at gunpoint to drive to the venue in north Belfast, one of the event's organisers said. Mr Coveney was driven away from the venue in his government car after leaving the stage. "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 organiser, said. 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 in attendance at the scene where a 400-metre (yard) exclusion zone was in place. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis sent “solidarity” to the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister after an event he was speaking at in Belfast was cancelled due to a security alert. Simon Coveney was speaking at the event organised by the John and Pat Hume Foundation in Belfast when he abruptly ended his speech and was ushered from the room. The Houben Centre, on the Crumlin Road, has been evacuated. Mr Lewis tweeted: “I am aware of reports of an ongoing security alert in Belfast. “I am being kept up to date and I am in regular contact with the PSNI. “Solidarity with Simon Coveney and all those impacted.” The driver was in tears inside the venue after alerting security officials to the incident and apologising to attendees for being forced to drive to the site, the Reuters journalist said. Mr Coveney said on Twitter he was "saddened and frustrated" that someone had been attacked and victimised and that his thoughts were with the driver. "I spoke to the poor man whose van was hijacked … He's lost his memory. He's traumatised. It's just unreal," Father Aidan O'Kane, the manager of the Houben Centre where the event was being held, told Reuters. A funeral in the adjacent church also had to be evacuated, O'Kane said. 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.
