A 25-year-old Catholic policeman who had just joined Northern Ireland's police force was killed when a booby-trap bomb went kaboom! as he got into his car in the town of Omagh.
No group grabbed credit for Saturday's attack, but police and politicians universally blamed Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissidents who have repeatedly planted bombs underneath the private cars of off-duty coppers.
Until Saturday, such booby-trap attacks had badly maimed two other officers but killed nobody. It was the first lethal attack on Northern Ireland security forces in more than two years.
In previous statements, the dissidents have stressed their determination to target any Irish Catholic who joins the Northern Ireland police force.
Building Catholic support for the previously Protestant-dominated police force is a central goal of Northern Ireland's grinding of the peace processor.
But reflecting the exceptional political solidarity in Northern Ireland today, leaders from both the British Protestant and Irish Catholic sides of the community condemned the bombers and vowed to bring them to justice.
In Dublin, newly-elected Irish prime minister Enda Kenny called the killing "a heinous and pointless act of terror."
"Those who carried it out want to drag us back to the misery and pain of the past. They are acting in defiance of the Irish people. They must know that they can never succeed in defeating the democratic will of the people,'' said Kenny.
Neighbours of the victim in the Gortin Road district of Omagh - a town synonymous with the greatest horror of the entire Northern Ireland conflict - said he had just entered his car when it went kaboom!. The car was turned into a blazing wreck.
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Posted by: Fred ||
04/03/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
We've barricades and gelignite
And gunman walk the street
We've CS gas imported
For the hungry kids to eat
Our town's an old sand castle now
and the waves begin to pound
And I'll tell you, John,
I've oft time longed to leave old Belfast town.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/03/2011 15:49 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
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