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.
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