So, it was the “Real IRA“.
Gordon Brown told the BBC: “I think the whole country is shocked and outraged at the evil and cowardly attacks on soldiers serving their country.
“We will do everything in our power to make sure that Northern Ireland is safe and secure and I assure you we will bring these murderers to justice.
“No murderer will be able to derail a peace process that has the support of the great majority of Northern Ireland.”
…
NI’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former IRA member, said nobody should say or do anything which would see Northern Ireland to its troubles.“I supported the IRA during the conflict, I myself was a member of the IRA but that war is over,” said the Sinn Fein MP.
“Now the people responsible for that last night’s incident are clearly signalling that they want to resume or restart that war.”
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams described the shooting as an attack on the “peace process” and said it was “wrong and counter-productive”.
“Those responsible have no support, no strategy to achieve a United Ireland,” he said.
“Their intention is to bring British soldiers back onto the streets. They want to destroy the progress of recent times and to plunge Ireland back into conflict.”
Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Democratic Unionist Party leader Peter Robinson offered his sympathies to the families of the victims, and said he and the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness would postpone a scheduled trip to the United States.
Mr Robinson said the attack was a “terrible reminder of the events of the past”.
He said information that those responsible had “deliberately turned their weapons on civilians” after murdering the soldiers gave an “idea of the crazed gunmen involved in this”.
“It is the duty of everyone to ensure these people are defeated,” he said.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward condemned the shootings as “an act of criminal barbarism”.
I cannot believe that these men will succeed in their aim of bringing the war back, again.
