Police in Northern Ireland have said they have "strong" intelligence terror attacks targeting their officers in Londonderry are being planned on Easter Monday. 

Assistant Chief Constable Bobby Singleton issued a warning over dissidents planning assaults over the bank holiday. 

PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne said that officers would be moved to frontline duties to counter any potential threats, in a policing strategy that he said had not been used in years.

MI5 had recently raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland to severe, meaning an attack is highly likely.

This followed the gun attack on senior detective John Caldwell in Co Tyrone, who has been left with life-changing injuries.

Many people are expected to take part in events reflecting on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement on April 10.

While the anniversary falls on Easter Monday, some victims of the Troubles gathered early on Friday morning to watch the sunrise on a Co Down beach.

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The Herald:

They looked back on the deal that changed the region’s future and became a blueprint for resolving global conflicts.

Later in Belfast, people living on both sides of a community interface will come together to commemorate the peace agreement.

Residents from the predominantly unionist Shankill Road and largely nationalist Falls Road will form a human peace wall.

At the same time at Stormont political figures involved in the negotiations 25 years ago will gather for a commemorative event at Parliament Buildings.

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In the Republic of Ireland, Dublin Unitarian Church is to hold its annual service to commemorate all those who died in the conflict, and in the time that followed.

More than 3,600 names of the people killed in Northern Ireland between 1966 and 2019 will be read out from noon until 3pm, and will include journalist Lyra McKee who was shot dead by dissident republicans in Londonderry four years ago.

The sunrise event at Killough beach was organised by the Wave Trauma Centre, which supports victims of the conflict.

Alan McBride, whose wife and father-in-law were both killed in the 1993 Shankill bomb in Belfast, voted yes in the referendum on the 1998 deal, despite the accord involving the early release of paramilitary killers, including the man responsible for the IRA bomb on the Shankill.

Mr McBride, who gathered with fellow victims on the beach on Friday, said he viewed the Good Friday Agreement as a “breakthrough”.

“It was a watershed in Northern Irish society in terms of the Troubles and coming through it. I never thought they ever would,” he told the PA news agency.

“I voted yes back then, my dad actually didn’t vote yes, he just couldn’t do it because of the prisoner releases and stuff.

“Twenty five years on, I would have thought that we would have been much further down the road to the sort of society that I believed we were voting for in ’98.”

He added: “I do think that our politicians have really let us down if I am being honest with you.”

The anniversary of the historic deal comes as Northern Ireland’s powersharing institutions remain collapsed, in a protest by the DUP over post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Despite a fresh framework struck between the EU and the UK Government earlier this year that looked to tweak the operation of the contentious Northern Ireland Protocol, Stormont has not returned.

Next week, US President Joe Biden will visit Belfast in a trip to commemorate a quarter of a decade since the US-brokered peace accord.

The following week, further events will be held which are to be attended by former US president Bill Clinton and his wife, former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.