Irish Republican Army dissidents claimed responsibility yesterday for fatally shooting a policeman in the head as he responded to an emergency call, just 48 hours after the killing of two soldiers.
The Continuity IRA said it killed Constable Stephen Carroll, 48, as he sat in his patrol car on Monday night in the religiously divided town of Craigavon, southwest of Belfast. In a coded statement to Belfast media the breakaway group threatened to keep targeting police “as long as there is British involvement in Ireland.”
The attack and claim followed Saturday’s gun attack on a British army base west of Belfast by a rival dissident group, the Real IRA.
PHOTO: AP
That attack killed two soldiers and wounded four other people.
Together, the killings are the first of British security forces in Northern Ireland since 1998 — the year that rival politicians struck a peace deal designed to leave behind decades of bloodshed.
But in a reflection of how dissident IRA violence now dominates the political agenda, the Catholic and Protestant leaders of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing coalition again canceled plans to travel to the US to seek increased American investment.
First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness initially postponed their trip on Sunday after Real IRA gunmen attacked off-duty soldiers as they collected pizzas outside their base from two delivery men, who were also shot. This time, the leaders got as far as London before turning back for home yesterday to deal with the swelling security crisis.
“I am sickened at the attempts by terrorists to destabilize Northern Ireland. Those responsible for this murderous act will not be allowed to drag our province back to the past,” said Robinson, whose Democratic Unionist Party represents most Protestants.
He called for sterner British security measures, but Catholic leaders warned this would play into the dissidents’ hands.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown denounced “murderers who are trying to distort, disrupt and destroy a political process that is working for the people of Northern Ireland.”
And the Republic of Ireland’s Belfast-born head of state, President Mary McAleese, appealed to Catholic civilians who know about dissidents living in their midst to break their traditional code of silence — and pass tipoffs to the police.
“The dissidents are now a tiny, isolated band of throwbacks using tired, old, failed strategies,” McAleese said.
The Northern Ireland police commander, Chief Constable Hugh Orde, said Monday night’s attack looked like “a deliberate set-up.”
Orde said police in Craigavon received “a call for help from a terrified member of the community.”
A woman reported that a street gang had shattered a window of her home.
He said the officers “stood off for a sensible period of time” to check for any signs they might be heading into a trap. Then two carloads of police drove in to deal with the woman’s call.
Carroll, an officer with more than 20 years’ service, was sitting in the car providing cover to the other unit when he was shot in the head, apparently at close range.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
The China Coast Guard has seized control of a disputed reef near a major Philippine military outpost in the South China Sea, Beijing’s state media said, adding to longstanding territorial tensions with Manila. Beijing claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea and has waved away competing assertions from other countries as well as an international ruling that its position has no legal basis. China and the Philippines have engaged in months of confrontations in the contested waters, and Manila is taking part in sweeping joint military drills with the US which Beijing has slammed as destabilizing. The Chinese coast guard
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
RSS