Two UK Soldiers Killed in Northern Ireland!

[Big Orange]

Breaking news!

Two soldiers dead in N Ireland army base shooting: police


BELFAST (AFP) — Two military personnel were killed and four people injured in a gun attack Saturday at an army base in Northern Ireland, a police spokesman said.

"Two people were shot dead, both male and military personnel," a spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland said. He added that four others were seriously injured, two of whom were also military personnel.

The attack took place at the headquarters of the Royal Engineers in Northern Ireland at Masserene.

Some reports suggested that it may have been a drive-by shooting, while others suggested the gunmen entered the barracks. It is thought that between 30 and 40 shots were fired.

Democratic Unionist lawmaker Jeffrey Donaldson told BBC television that he understood gunmen armed with machine guns had got into the barracks and may have been disguised as pizza delivery men.

"This is a terrible attack. I understand that gunmen with machine guns entered the barracks, the entrance of Masserene barracks at Antrim and opened fire," he said, adding that they entered "possibly in the guise of a pizza delivery van".

"This is a terrible reminder of the consequences of terrorism. We've had this in the past and no-one wants to see this happening in Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland endured three decades of civil unrest known as the Troubles in which around 3,000 people were killed. The violence largely ended with the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

A deal was agreed in 2007 in which the mainly Protestant Democratic Unionists, which wants Northern Ireland to stay part of Britain, and Catholic Sinn Fein, which calls for integration into the Republic of Ireland, agreed to form a power-sharing government which has devolved power from London.

Paramilitary attacks in Northern Ireland are now relatively rare compared to the heights of the Troubles.

But the last 18 months have seen an upsurge in violent activity from republican paramilitaries opposed to the peace process, including more than a dozen unsuccessful murder bids against police officers.

Northern Ireland's top policeman Sir Hugh Orde said last week that he had called in specialist support from British security service MI5 and the military to help deal with the rising threat from dissident Republicans.

He has said that the threat from dissidents to police officers was high.

"We have said consistently that the threat has increased against police officers," he said.

"We are very clear -- they are determined to kill police officers going about their normal duty of keeping people safe."

Very bad news (and timing) considering we're suppose to have a cease fire and the British military is badly overstretched in the Middle East.

[Darksider]

Didn't the IRA disband or something? I thought this shit was over and done with.

[Civil War Man]

The IRA hasn't disbanded, but after the car bombing in Omagh back in 1998, the big players in the conflict haven't really been interested in fighting.

As far as I am aware, the only people who are still involved are tiny splinter groups that no one wants to associate with.

[LadyTevar]

You don't have to have the IRA to have terrorism. All you need are a few malcontents with ideas and a way to get weapons. They might claim to be "the real" IRA, or some other such BS to give themselves a feeling of legitimacy, but they are not and may not ever have been associated with the IRA in truth.

In short... they are copycats wanting to make a splash as 'heroes/defenders of Irish freedom'.

[Sea Skimmer]

Didn't the IRA disband or something? I thought this shit was over and done with.

The first IRA broke up in 1921, since then the title IRA has been taking up by numerous splinter groups, some larger then others. The big groups have all disarmed in turn, but anyone with people willing to follow them can just make another one. No matter how much the splinter groups might even want to account for all weapons caches, many invariably still remain buried across Ireland.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yeah, for the most part it's been done with since the Killing of those children at Omagha, this is REALLY bad though, and I hope that it's not just some mobsters tryign to bring back the bad old days.

[thejester]

Wasn't that big bank heist in Belfast a year or two ago suspected of being the work of the Real IRA or a similar group?

[Jade Falcon]

The IRA involved in the Troubles was the Provisional IRA.

Groups like the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA are tiny in comparison.

[Glimmervoid]

According to my morning metro (a free newspaper), the Real IRA has claimed they did it.

[Civil War Man]

Seeing as how the Real IRA are the assholes behind the previously mentioned Omagh bombing, color me unsurprised.

When I first read the story, I had a sneaking suspicion that they were the guys behind it.

[Big Orange]

The "Real" IRA doesn't seem to be a single group, but loads of little groups comprised of fruitcakes who just won't let go, while their compatriots (and the UVF) drift off into making money out of protection, ponography, and narcotics.

[Jon]

Don't know if it's related but;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7933990.stm

Police officer shot dead in town

A police officer has died following a shooting incident in Craigavon, County Armagh.

The incident is understood to have happened near Lismore High School at Brownlow.

Police came under attack while investigating suspicious activity near the school.

The attack follows the weekend murder of two soldiers outside an Army base in Antrim. The Real IRA said they were responsible.

Sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, from Birmingham and Patrick Azimkar, 21, from London, were shot dead at Massereene Army base, Antrim.

The soldiers were killed as they accepted a pizza delivery at about 2120 GMT on Saturday.

Four other people, including two pizza delivery men - Anthony Watson, 19, from Antrim and a Polish man in his 30s - were injured in that attack.

[Lord Pounder]

A cynical person would actually ask what the difference between the Real IRA and the Provisional IRA actually is. I live in the fecking country and I'm hard pressed to tell the difference. The timing is also very suspicious. Not too long after this statement is made some assholes go and shoot up an army base. If it looks like a sheep and bleats like a sheep it's a fucking sheep but as usual Republicans think then can have it both ways while ordinary people suffer.

[Big Orange]

Terrorist movements have always been loosely affiliated, with the real coherency being present in individual cells with a common ideology being the binding factor between them (Osama Bin Laden could easily be long dead, yet his strong set of ideas will still motivate his dispersed followers into doing similar things). So of course informal terrorist movements will be more unpredictable, contradictory, and treacherous as a whole with no strong authority leading them unlike with a strong, more formal nation state.

Anyway, here is an update:

Ireland unites against the killers
• Thousands expected at peace rallies
• Two arrested over police shooting

An unprecedented denunciation of dissident republican terrorists is expected to unfold across Ireland today with thousands of protesters expected in rallies in the north while politicians in the south unite to condemn the Real and Continuity IRA for the murders of two soldiers and a police officer.

The rallies have been organised at short notice in Belfast, Derry and other cities, and will coincide with Ireland's taoiseach, Brian Cowen, proposing a motion in the Dáil condemning the groups which have claimed responsibility for the shootings.

As detectives arrested two people in connection with Monday night's killing of PC Stephen Paul Carroll - a teenager and a 37-year-old man were being questioned at Antrim police station - the taoiseach said he felt "deep sadness and disgust" about what had happened, and the claim of responsibility from CIRA.

Cowen said PC Carroll, 48, died "serving all the people of Ireland and protecting the peace people now treasure. The people and all of their democratic representatives reject this violence and will overcome the evil and unrepresentative minority who want to drag us back to the past."

Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, yesterday nudged mainstream republicans further towards full co-operation with the security forces. McGuinness said that if he had had any firsthand knowledge of who was behind the murder of PC Carroll he would personally pass it on to the police.

In the strongest language yet used by a leading figure in Sinn Féin, he condemned the killers as "traitors to the entire island of Ireland. They [the dissidents] have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all of the people who live on this island. They don't deserve to be supported by anyone".

On the eve of the rallies, which have been organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Peter Bunting, the organisation's assistant general secretary, said the Real and Continuity IRA did not deserve to be called dissidents.

"This show of strength from civil society will send a clear message to the killers who do not deserve the monopoly of the word 'dissident'. The word is too good for them. They are delinquents. A clear message will also go to the outside world which makes clear the decency and humanity of the people of Northern Ireland."

The call for ordinary people to come out and show their disgust about the upsurge in violence came after PC Carroll was shot in the back of the head on Monday night - two days after the murders of two British soldiers outside their military barracks at Massereene, Antrim.

A gunman fired through the rear window of PC Carroll's unmarked patrol car at Lismore Manor, a private cul-de-sac next to the republican Drumbeg estate in Craigavon. Two shots were fired at PC Carroll and a colleague as they answered a call from a woman whose home had been attacked earlier in the evening. The sniper was hiding behind a grassy incline between Lismore and the Drumbeg area.

The officer was just two years from retirement after serving 24 years as a policeman in Northern Ireland, much of it through the worst of the violence when the IRA's campaign was at its height. He is the first member of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to be murdered since it was formed eight years ago.

His widow Kate, a teacher at a local college, said: "A good husband has been taken away from me, and my life has been destroyed. And what for? A piece of land that my husband is only going to get six feet of. These people have just taken my life as well."

Mrs Carroll told friends she had hugged her husband before he went out on patrol, telling him: "Now you look after yourself." He replied: "Don't worry about me. I'll be grand. They won't get me."

Continuity IRA admitted responsibility for the shooting and warned of further attacks. In a coded message to the Belfast Telegraph, CIRA said the shooting had been carried out by its North Armagh "battalion". The message said: "As long as there is British involvement in Ireland, these attacks will continue."

The chief constable of the PSNI, Sir Hugh Orde, insisted he would not be putting soldiers back on to the streets. He briefed Peter Robinson, the first minister, and McGuinness, his deputy, on the police response to the crisis and the three stood outside Stormont and urged everyone to back the police in helping to track down the killers.

There has been concern that loyalists will be lured into tit-for-tat shootings. However, loyalist sources told the Guardian last night that they believed the main loyalist terror groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association, would not be provoked into a return to violence by the dissident republicans.

The UVF's leaders called an emergency conference in Shankill Road, Belfast on Monday afternoon to discuss the weekend murder of two soldiers at Massareene barracks. Loyalist sources said the UVF leadership urged its members not to respond violently. "Why would we walk into a trap so obviously set down by our enemies?" one UVF source told the Guardian yesterday. "There is no appetite to return to violence among loyalists. They would prefer if the police take these people on."

But the Traditional Unionist Voice MEP Jim Allister said it was time for the SAS to be deployed as the PSNI was incapable of countering the terror threat on its own. "Having turned our police into a mere service and deliberately destroyed special branch, all at republican behest, we are now ill equipped to face the harvest of what has been sowed. Our present reduced and denuded police cannot cope alone with active republican terrorism. Thus now is the time to bring in the SAS."

Link

[Teebs]

The thing that really confuses me abou Irish Republican terrorism, especially nowadays, is that Ireland doesn't want Northern Ireland. There is no way in hell they'd take the place even if the UK offered it to them on a silver platter.

[Sea Skimmer]

The thing that really confuses me abou Irish Republican terrorism, especially nowadays, is that Ireland doesn't want Northern Ireland. There is no way in hell they'd take the place even if the UK offered it to them on a silver platter.

The IRA splinter groups have always been against the government in Dublin too, ever since it was formed, and they failed at a civil war to overthrow it. So basically if they’d ever won at phase one, taking Northern Ireland away from the British, they’d have just gone to a phase two and started attacking the Irish government again until it did accept unification or collapsed.