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Drumbeg estate in Craigavon, Co Armagh
The Drumbeg estate in Craigavon, Co Armagh, close to the spot where PC Stephen Carroll was shot dead by a sniper on Monday evening. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA
The Drumbeg estate in Craigavon, Co Armagh, close to the spot where PC Stephen Carroll was shot dead by a sniper on Monday evening. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA

Ireland unites against the killers

This article is more than 15 years old
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."

More on this story

More on this story

  • Peace protests across Northern Ireland

  • Gordon Brown vows to bring Northern Ireland murderers to justice

  • They shall not kill our peace

  • NI policeman murder: 'People are concerned at any slippage towards the Troubles again'

  • 'We are scared' - Good Friday generation fears return of the gun

  • Still at war ... dissidents revive grim memories of the Troubles

  • Victim was on brink of new career

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