BELFAST (AFP) — Prime Minister Gordon Brown insisted Monday that the Northern Ireland peace process is "unshakeable" as he used a surprise visit to the province to vow to catch the killers of two young soldiers.
The Real IRA, a dissident Republican group, has claimed responsibility for the first killings of British soldiers in 12 years in an attack that has rattled all of Ireland.
The two soldiers, who were about to start a tour of Afghanistan, were wounded as pizzas were delivered to their barracks late Saturday and then shot again as they lay injured on the ground, according to police.
Brown said the Real IRA "have no place in the politics of Northern Ireland.
"These are callous murderers, these are terrorists who showed no sympathy towards people who were dying... these people have got to be hunted down and brought to justice as quickly as possible," he said.
"The political process will not and can never be shaken. In fact, the political process is now unshakeable," he added.
As well as the two dead -- Sapper Mark Quinsey, 23 and Sapper Cengiz Azimkar, 21 -- two other soldiers and two pizza delivery men were wounded in the attack by two masked gunmen at the Massereene Barracks in Antrim, northwest of Belfast.
On Sunday a man who said he was from the Real IRA claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to an Irish newspaper.
The attack raised fears that sectarian violence could return to Northern Ireland, which has seen relative peace since 30 years of sectarian bloodshed was largely ended with the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.
Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the province's main republican Catholic party and the political wing of the now-defunct Irish Republican Army (IRA), said those behind the attack had no popular support.
But he accused Northern Ireland's police chief Hugh Orde of making a "huge mistake" by calling in a small number of army surveillance specialists to track dissident republicans -- a move Orde admitted just 36 hours before the attack.
"The British army in Ireland is not wanted by republicans, by patriots, by democrats. I stress again this is not to justify what occurred," he said.
Republicans want Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join the Republic of Ireland to the south.
There are reportedly up to 300 dissident republicans active in Northern Ireland, and a senior security source told AFP the shooting was a professional one which marked a "step change" in the extremist threat.
The Real IRA -- an IRA splinter group formed in 1997 to oppose Sinn Fein's role in the peace process -- was responsible for Northern Ireland's most deadly attack, the 1998 Omagh bombing which killed 29 people.
The Good Friday accords largely ended the bloodshed in Northern Ireland, although efforts to set up self-rule faltered until two years ago, when Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists agreed to share power.
Ireland's Catholic bishops, gathered for a spring meeting, condemned the "direct and heinous attack" on Northern Ireland's peace process, aiming to "wreck our future and destroy hope."
Northern Ireland's top soldier Brigadier George Norton, speaking outside the Massereene barracks, condemned the "callous and clinical attack" and paid tribute to the "magnificent" soldiers of the 38 Engineer Regiment, based there.
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, in a statement to the House of Commons, blasted the attackers as "barbaric criminals prepared to carry out an act of premeditated mass murder.
"They are simply brutal and cowardly killers," he added.
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