Pizzas galore!

"We will deliver justice and we will allow the peace process to continue."

The attack has left Craigavon residents numbed and horrified. One father, close to tears, reported that his children were scared to walk to school past the scene of the killing, where forensic officers were this morning conducting detailed searches.

On Saturday night two British soldiers were shot dead as they collected a pizza delivery outside Massereene barracks in Co Antrim.

Another dissident republican group, the Real IRA, has claimed responsibility for that attack, in which two further off-duty soldiers and two men delivering pizzas were injured.

Times Archive, 1979: Five soldiers killed in IRA offensive

Army speculation of a campaign lasting another ten years was confirmed by the IRA. There would never be a truce, it said

• IRA murders three soldiers in ambush, 1982

• Two soldiers killed by IRA sniper, 1977

• Policemen die in ambush, 1975

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Craigavon, scene of last night's killing, is a power base for the Continuity IRA. A handful of hardline republican dissidents are said to flip-flop between membership of each splinter group, both of which reject the peace process.

Rank and file police representatives called for an review of the security situation and of the safety of members of the police and security services.

Terry Spence, chairman of the Police Federation, told BBC Radio 4’s World At One that seven Northern Ireland police officers had been injured as a result of gun and bomb attacks in the last 18 months. “If every attack mounted by the dissident republicans had been successful in the way they intended, we could have had 45 officers murdered in that period,” he said.

The Prime Minister described the attacks as the work of "murderers who are trying to distort, disrupt and destroy a political process that is working for the people or Northern Ireland".

"A small minority will never be allowed to undermine or destroy the political process... All the political parties in Northern Ireland have made it clear that there will be no return to the old days," Gordon Brown added.

Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister, and Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister, were today forced for a second time to postpone their planned St Patrick's Day trip to the United States to meet President Obama, already delayed once by Saturday's shootings.

Jim Allister, a Northern Ireland MEP, called for the SAS to be drafted back into Ulster "before it gets out of hand".

Both Sir Hugh and Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary, today ruled out bringing British troops back to the streets of the province.

There are fears however that the sudden escalation in violence will draw a counter reaction from loyalist paramilitaries and destabilise the peace process.

Dolores Kelly, an SDLP member of Northern Ireland’s policing board, said that the province was staring into the abyss. "I would appeal to people to pull back," he said.

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