Nine questioned over N. Ireland killings

Nine people were being quizzed yesterday about the murder of two soldiers and a policeman in Northern Ireland, as the police chief compared dissident groups behind the attacks to a "cornered animal".

A 30-year-old woman and a man, 37, were arrested Saturday over the killing of constable Stephen Carroll, who was shot in the head while on duty last Monday.

A 17-year-old youth and two other men are already in custody over the attack.

Meanwhile, police investigating the shooting of two soldiers at a barracks faced a hail of petrol bombs and stones hurled by rioting youths in Lurgan near Belfast, where a gun and ammunition were discovered in house searches.

The riots came after a prominent republican, 41-year-old Colin Duffy, was arrested over the shooting of the soldiers.

Mr Duffy is a former member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), who has distanced himself from the IRA's former political wing Sinn Fein since it agreed to share power with pro-British unionists.

The three murders within 48 hours raised fears that the province was about to slip back into the violence that raged for more than three decades until peace accords in 1998 led to Catholic-Protestant power-sharing.

Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde said that while the dissidents opposed to the peace process were relatively small in numbers, they were extremely violent.

He revealed that dissident groups had made at least 25 attempts to kill police officers in the past 18 months, but said many of the hard core had been identified.

Writing in the News of the World, Mr Orde said "the current wisdom is that they (the dissidents) number around 300 in a population of 1.75 million."

"They are also very dangerous, like any cornered animal in its death throes."

Speaking later, he dismissed reports that the dissidents were aiming to carry out attacks on high-profile targets in Britain, including politicians, as lurid speculation.

"I think the press has rather run away with the reality here. I am very clear where the threat lies. It is in Northern Ireland and these small, marginalised, disenfranchised and well-infiltrated groups are prepared to kill police officers and the security services," he told BBC television.

Police chief Orde dismissed calls for the army to back up his officers on the streets - a move which republican politicians have warned would be explosive because it would hark back to the so-called Troubles.

The Real IRA, a group which splintered off from the IRA, has 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.

Police are questioning a total of four men over the murders of the soldiers, who were sprayed with bullets as they collected a pizza delivery at their barracks.

Another group, the Continuity IRA, said it killed the policeman.

A hardline republican opposed to the peace process said those who still believed in a united Ireland without involvement from London would never give up their weapons, and would continue to target the security forces.

"As long as the British remain, there will always be some kind of IRA," Ruairi O'Bradaigh, 77, told the Observer newspaper, adding: "What happened last weekend could have happened and will happen at any time."