http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/415399/1/.html
BELFAST - Gangs of youths threw petrol bombs at
police in Northern Ireland on Saturday after a prominent republican
was among three people arrested over the murder of two British
soldiers.
The troubled province's police chief, meanwhile, warned that
hundreds of dissidents, whom he described as "very dangerous", were
aiming to derail its fledgling peace process.
The three men, aged 21, 32 and 41, were being questioned by police
over the shooting of the soldiers at Massereene Barracks in Antrim,
northwest of Belfast, on March 7.
According to a police source, the 41-year-old was Colin Duffy, who
has distanced himself from Republican party Sinn Fein since it
agreed to share power with pro-London unionists.
In the aftermath of his arrest, gangs of masked youths threw stones
at police near Duffy's home in Lurgan, southwest of Belfast, and
petrol bombs were later thrown at vehicles belonging to the Police
Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), a police spokesman said.
"Missiles including petrol bombs and stones have been thrown at
police at a number of locations in Lurgan," a PSNI spokesman said,
adding that no one had been injured and no petrol bombs had been
thrown since around 7:00pm (1900GMT).
The spokesman estimated that the youths had numbered around 20, and
said that a male in his late teens was arrested but later released,
while a male in his early teens had also been arrested.
The Real IRA, a dissident republican group, claimed responsibility
for the March 7 attack which killed sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and
Cengiz "Patrick" Azimkar, 21, in the first such killings for over a
decade.
CCTV footage of the attack -- in which four people were also
injured in a hail of bullets, when the soldiers stepped outside the
barracks to receive a pizza delivery -- has helped detectives
hunting the killers.
Three men were already being questioned over the killing of
policeman Stephen Carroll in Northern Ireland on Monday, an attack
claimed by another republican splinter group, the Continuity
IRA.
On Saturday, a police spokesman said that they had seized a gun and
ammunition while conducting a search in Craigavon, the town where
Carroll was shot.
Officers also arrested an unnamed 30-year-old woman and a
37-year-old man in the same town in connection with "serious
terrorist offences".
The three killings sparked fears of a return to violence a decade
after peace accords ended the so-called Troubles that scarred
Northern Ireland for 30 years, leaving over 3,500 people
dead.
In an article to be published in the News of the World on Sunday,
PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde said that there had been at
least 25 attempts by dissident terrorists to kill police officers
on and off duty in the past 18 months.
"The current wisdom is that they number around 300 in a population
of 1.75 million," Orde wrote, referring to the number of
attackers.
"They are also very dangerous, like any cornered animal in its
death throes."
Pro-London Protestant unionists and Catholic Republicans -- who
want Northern Ireland united with the neighbouring Republic of
Ireland -- struck a landmark deal in 2007 to share power in
Belfast.
The Continuity IRA and the Real IRA are both splinter groups of the
IRA, which was the military wing of Catholic socialists Sinn Fein,
now sharing power with the Democratic Unionists.
The Real IRA was behind Northern Ireland's most deadly attack, the
1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people.
A memorial service for the two British soldiers -- who were killed
just hours before they were due to leave for service in Afghanistan
-- was held on Thursday, while Carroll was buried on Friday.
Leaders in Britain and Ireland, which have mediated the peace
process over the last decade or more, have vowed that the killings
will not derail Northern Ireland's movement back towards
normality.
On Wednesday thousands of people joined peace vigils in Belfast and
other cities across the province to denounce the
killings.