Scotch-Irish-L Archives

Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 1998-03 > 0888976349


From: McCrystle <>
Subject: For those who don't think Politics and Religion matter....
Date: Tue, 3 Mar 1998 20:52:29 EST


Read on. All taken from an AMERICAN Newspaper today. Obviously, these things
are impacting our ancestors; so if you get to be bored by religion (and
thoughts of insurance and medical attention) and politics, think how
absolutely lucky you are! These people are not so lucky. Read on...

Unidentified gunmen raked a predominantly Catholic pub with gunfire Tuesday,
fatally wounding a Catholic and a Protestant man talking together at the bar,
police and locals said.
``It was pandemonium. People were just running out shocked and traumatized,''
said the SDLP's deputy leader, Seamus Mallon, who is a close friend of the pub
owners and came quickly to the scene.
``This was a bar where Catholics and Protestants drank together, although it
was owned by Catholics,'' he said, calling the shooting ``an attack on the
entire peace process.''
Mallon blamed extremists opposed to a 1994 cease-fire being observed by the
north's major pro-British paramilitary groups, which draw support from
militant Protestant areas. They have often shot people indiscriminately in
Catholic social venues in the past, assuming that all their targets will be
Catholic.
Neville Stevenson, a Protestant farmer at a nighttime sheep market across the
street from the pub, said his cousin was among the wounded but he wasn't sure
whether he had died. ``I'm in a terrible state,'' he said.
Police said the gunmen's getaway car went in the direction of Banbridge, the
nearest predominantly pro-British Protestant town from Poyntzpass.

Earlier, another unidentified gunman tried to kill a Catholic man working
alone at a roadside fast-food trailer near Toomebridge, 30 miles west of
Belfast, but his handgun jammed and he fled in a waiting car, police said.

Tuesday began with Irish army experts defusing a car bomb concealed in a
hayshed in Hackballscross. The crossroads lies 45 miles south of Belfast and
just a mile in the Irish Republic. Police said it had been stored there in
advance of a likely strike across the border, where the British army has
several fortifications.
No group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's defused bomb, but police said
they suspected an anti-British gang called Continuity IRA was behind it.

The Continuity IRA, opposed to the mainstream IRA's 7-month-old truce, also
was blamed for a 250-pound bomb dismantled on a different stretch of the
border last week and is suspected of detonating car bombs in two predominantly
pro-British Protestant towns last month.

Police blamed extremists within the north's various pro-British paramilitary
groups for the abortive gun attack near Toomebridge. The attackers' car
escaped in the direction of Castledawson, a predominantly Protestant town.

Also Tuesday, a hard-line Protestant politician contended that police foiled
an effort by the IRA to bomb Northern Ireland's police headquarters in east
Belfast.
Police refused to comment on the claim by Ian Paisley Jr., justice spokesman
for the Democratic Unionist Party, that detectives had discovered a stolen car
fitted with fake license plates that matched those of a civilian who works
inside the headquarters.

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