The republican dissident group behind Northern Ireland's worst single atrocity apparently claimed responsibility yesterday for shooting dead two British soldiers at an army base.
A man who said he was from the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the attack at the Massereene barracks northwest of Belfast late Saturday in a phone call to a newspaper using a recognised code word.
The soldiers were killed late Saturday when two gunmen pulled up outside their barracks as a regular pizza delivery arrived and sprayed up to 40 shots in two long bursts of automatic gunfire before fleeing, police said.
The first killing of British soldiers in Northern Ireland for 12 years has raised fears of a return to sectarian violence in the province, which has seen relative peace since 30 years of unrest largely ended in 1998.
Politicians vowed the attack, which also left four wounded, would not shake the political system. Northern Ireland is a British province ruled by a devolved power-sharing government uniting former Protestant and Catholic foes.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: "No murderer will be able to derail a peace process that has the support of the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland and we will step up our efforts to make the peace process one that lasts and endures."
The United States also condemned the attack and urged all parties "to unequivocally reject such senseless acts of violence whose intention is to destroy the peace that so many in Northern Ireland have worked so hard to achieve."
However, officials will be deeply concerned by the prospect that the Real IRA may be behind the attack. The group was responsible for Northern Ireland's single biggest attack, the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people.
Suzanne Breen, a reporter with the Irish Sunday Tribune newspaper, said she received a telephone call yesterday evening from a man who made "no apology" for the attack.
"A man who said he was a representative of the South Antrim Brigade of the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the attack," Ms Breen told BBC television.
"He said that he made no apology for attacking British soldiers in Massereene army base nor the men who were delivering pizza to them, who he called collaborators with the British rule in Ireland.
"He said that more details of the attack would be given over the coming days and he used an authorised codeword."
A senior security source said the shooting was a professional one which marked a "step change" in the extremist threat.
The two dead soldiers, whose identities were not immediately released, were off-duty ahead of a planned deployment to Afghanistan yesterday.
Two other soldiers were also wounded as well as the two pizza delivery men. Three were in hospital in serious condition yesterday, and the fourth was listed as critical.
Violence in Northern Ireland which cost some 3,000 lives largely ended with the signing of the Good Friday accords in 1998, amid hopes that power-sharing between Protestants, who favour ongoing union with Britain, and Republicans who prefer unification with Ireland, would finally stop sectarianism.