The "Real IRA" returns

[Richard]

They're back. Wonder how long before the Brown Jobs show up.

Richard's $.02

Irish Assault Raises Specter of Brutal Days
John Burns, NYT, 8 Mar 2009

After years of sharply reduced political violence in Northern Ireland, the gunning down of a group of British soldiers by suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents has shaken the Protestant and Catholic communities and challenged the still fragile cohesion of the province’s power-sharing government.

Politicians from both communities joined Sunday in condemning the attack on the soldiers and two pizza deliverymen outside a British Army base in Antrim, 15 miles northwest of Belfast. The attack, which took place late Saturday, killed two soldiers and seriously wounded two other soldiers and the deliverymen, who somehow survived follow-up volleys of automatic fire as they lay sprawled on the road outside the base’s main gate.

It was the first deadly assault on the British military in Northern Ireland since an I.R.A. sniper shot a soldier in 1997, a year before the Good Friday peace agreement, with the United States as a central broker, set out a road map for ending sectarian violence in the province of 1.8 million people.

Politicians in Northern Ireland said the shootings had the earmarks of a bid by dissident republicans to destabilize the power-sharing government. It took office nearly two years ago after 30 years of violence that killed 3,700 people.

(cont'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

[uboat509]

The question, of course, is was this really an IRA hit was it something else?

SFC W

[mojaveman]

It was either an IRA ambush or those guys were desperately hungry for some pizza. Do they have Dominos pizza in Northern Ireland?

[Richard]

Originally Posted by mojaveman

Do they have Dominos pizza in Northern Ireland?

Dominos Pizza UK & IRL, PLC. Dominos has franchises in 60 countries internationally. Mama mia, attsa lottsa pizza!

Richard's $.02

[Richard]

Real IRA: Northern Ireland's deadly dissenters
Robert Barr, AP, 9 Mar 2009

The Real IRA, which claimed responsibility for killing two British soldiers over the weekend, has caused more havoc than any other Irish Republican Army splinter group since most IRA members embraced a peace process in Northern Ireland.

The Real IRA pursues a dream, abandoned by the mainstream of the IRA, of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom and into the Republic of Ireland.

It committed Northern Ireland's deadliest terrorist act, the Aug. 15, 1998 car bombing in Omagh that killed 29 people and wounded more than 300. However, it has shown nothing approaching the IRA's ability to mount attacks from 1970 to 1997, when it killed nearly 1,800 people in both Northern Ireland and Britain.

The dissidents are few in number, according to Paul Bew, professor of Irish politics at Queen's University in Belfast.

"Their potential influence lies in their ability to capsize the arrangements that have been reached between larger groups," Bew said in a commentary published Monday in The Times newspaper in London.

The group's reputed founder, Michael McKevitt, is in jail, the first man ever convicted in Ireland on a charge of directing terrorism.

(cont'd) http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090309/...6YLBeTtod0bBAF

[mojaveman]

It was kind of sad reading that after all of the progress that was made between the Protestants and Catholics in the Belfast Agreement of 1998. That achievement might as well have been a miracle when you consider that the problems in Northern Ireland go all the way back to the time of King James I at the begining of the 17th Century. There are some ruthless people in those different splinter groups of the IRA and it's disturbing that so many innocent victims always seem to get caught in the crossfire.