Attempts to Negotiate Peace After Bloodshed in Northern Ireland

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ANTRIM, Northern Ireland – It may not be over yet as leaders of Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant government pledged to keep the peace Sunday, after Irish Republican Army dissidents fatally shot two off-duty British soldiers meeting pizza delivery men at a barracks entrance.

Police said the gunmen opened fire from a car outside the base, then shot at least some victims at close range as they lay on the ground. The bloodshed is all too familiar when we learned of four UK soldiers being hit with two fatalities. Also shot were the two delivery men, a local teenager who was seriously wounded, and a 32-year-old Polish immigrant who remained in critical condition Sunday night.

The Sunday Tribune newspaper said it received a claim of responsibility in a phone call from a man claiming to represent the Real IRA splinter group. The paper said the caller, who used a code word to verify he was a spokesman for the outlawed gang, defended the shooting and described the Domino's Pizza workers as "collaborators of British rule in Ireland."

The Real IRA was responsible for the deadliest terror attack in Northern Ireland history: a 1998 car-bombing of the town of Omagh that killed 29 people, mostly women and children.
The senior Catholic in the power-sharing coalition, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, said dissidents were trying to rekindle sectarian bloodshed and force Britain to resume sterner security policies.

The IRA killed nearly 1,800 people from 1970 to 1997 in a failed effort to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom and into the Republic of Ireland. The IRA disarmed and renounced violence in 2005, but splinter groups using a wide range of labels have tried to continue the campaign.

~Dana

Dana's Muse

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AP