Pat Dollard

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BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) – The Police Service of Northern Ireland says one of its officers has been shot and wounded in an ambush in Craigavon, a town southwest of Belfast.

Monday’s attack in Craigavon’s Lismore Road area, a predominantly Irish Catholic area, came two days after Real IRA dissidents shot and killed two British soldiers at an army base in the town of Antrim. Two other soldiers and two pizza delivery men were wounded in that attack.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for today’s shooting.

The Independent:

Special Forces may have sparked assault

The decision of the Northern Ireland police chief, Sir Hugh Orde, to deploy undercover British special forces against dissident republicans highlighted the controversial and emotive history of the troops during the Troubles.

Dissidents opposed to Northern Ireland’s peace process and the Catholic-Protestant government it forged have been increasing their attacks against British security forces in recent months.

Nationalists have repeatedly accused the SAS of conducting a dirty war, including assassinations, during the years of violence. Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister and former IRA leader, described the move as “stupid and dangerous”. One theory is that Saturday’s attack, for which the Real IRA has claimed responsibility, was a response to Sir Hugh’s announcement.

The unit deployed, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), was formed four years ago with the specific aim of targeting international terrorism. However, the core membership is drawn from 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment and Signals Regiment and many would have seen previous service in Ulster. Much of the covert-intelligence gathering skills of the SRR have also been honed in the province.

The 400-strong group was the first regiment-sized special forces unit to be formed for nearly 50 years. They have their headquarters, like the SAS, in Hereford and fall under the command of the Director of Special Forces.

Members of the SRR were put on the ground in Northern Ireland after a car bomb weighing 300lb was found at Castlewellan in County Down. Their main function, according to defence sources, was to carry out deep cover surveillance, including electronic eavesdropping, rather than take part in immediate offensive operations. “It wasn’t a question of them kicking down doors and shooting people in the middle of the night” insisted a senior officer “but providing some much needed intelligence for the police.”

The SRR had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Members were on duty in Basra taking part in an operation to rescue special forces soldiers seized by Shia militiamen in September 2005. They have also been involved in the freeing of hostage Norman Kember in March 2006 and the so far unsuccessful attempts to free five Britons who were seized from the Finance Ministry in Baghdad in 2007.

In Afghanistan, troops from the SRR deployed to Helmand and Kandahar and are said to have played a vital role in a series of operations, a so-called decapitation campaign, in which Taliban leaders were killed. The unit’s main role on those occasions was to gather information on the movement of the targets.

The SRR was also reported to have been involved in the operation which led to the killing of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes after the 7/7 bombings in London. Members were said to be providing “technical support” for Scotland Yard anti-terrorist officers.

The Independent:

They had come to the gates of their Masserene base in Co Antrim to collect pizza when they were ambushed by terrorists firing automatic rifles. Four other people were wounded in the attack including a Polish national who is critically ill in hospital. The killers even stood over their victims and fired a second volley.

Last night, a Dublin-based newspaper had a call supposedly from the Real IRA claiming responsibility for the attack, using a recognised codename.

Security sources said the planning and execution of the attack showed an increasing sophistication among the dissidents, as well as growing evidence of collusion between republican groups. Monitoring of communications presented a “confusing and complex” picture in which members of the two main groups, Real and Continuity IRA, appeared to be speaking to each other while the groups themselves were split into as many as six sub-groups.

There was also evidence that the dissidents have been acquiring weaponry including semi-automatic rifles, machine-pistols and, mechanisms for detonating pressure-plate explosive devices of the type British forces face in Afghanistan and Iraq. But security sources deny reports that a 300lb car bomb found at Castlewellan, Co Down, had, as it was reported at the time, an advanced anti-handling device.

Though it seems there were no prior indications of the Saturday night attack, security was already unusually high because of an increased threat from a variety of small-scale but lethal republican dissidents opposed to the peace process. This month, the threat level was upgraded from “substantial” to “severe”, and sources revealed that MI5 spends 15 per cent of its resources on countering terrorism in Northern Ireland. Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde recently requested support from the Army’s Special Reconnaissance Regiment to help with surveillance.

The weekend victims had gone to meet a mobile Domino’s Pizza takeaway which had arrived with food for the soldiers. The gunmen obviously knew of the regular routine on Saturday nights when as many as 20 orders of pizza were delivered. They waited until the troops emerged through the gates to pick up the food. The ambushers then stepped forward from the shadows and sprayed bullets with sustained bursts from semi-automatic weapons, hitting four soldiers and two Domino employees.

A senior police officer said: “The gunmen, having fired an initial volley of shots, moved forward when people were on the ground and fired additional shots at those people on the ground, so it was a very, very callous and very ruthless attack.”

Maverick republican splinter groups have for some time publicly proclaimed their ambition to kill members of the security forces as part of a strategy to restart the Troubles and return to large-scale conflict. They have injured several police personnel in gun and bomb attacks but security force members have escaped with their lives, sometimes by luck.