Gunfire, Grenades Kill 3, Hurt 68 at IRA Rites

BELFAST, Northern Ireland â€”  A Protestant extremist hurled grenades and fired a pistol into a large crowd of Roman Catholic mourners Wednesday, killing three people, wounding 68 and turning the funeral of three Irish Republican Army members into chaos and panic.

The attacker, identified as Michael Stone, from a Protestant section of the city, was eventually chased down by enraged mourners and badly beaten before law officers intervened at gunpoint to arrest him.

“People were stomping up and down on his head,� said one witness to the capture. “He’s lucky to be alive.�

Buses, Cars Set Ablaze

As news of the attack reverberated through Belfast’s tightly packed Catholic neighborhoods, youths took to the streets, setting buses and cars on fire.

Late Wednesday night, the city was tense but quiet, with police and army roadblocks set up in several areas.

The largest Protestant paramilitary organization, the Ulster Defense Assn., denied any link with the attack, but there is some evidence that Stone may have had some support from another Protestant extremist group.

Police arrested a second man in connection with the attack late Wednesday; he was not identified.

The attack occurred at one of the city’s largest Catholic cemeteries, where thousands of mourners had gathered to bury three IRA guerrillas killed 10 days ago in Gibraltar by members of the British army’s elite Special Air Services.

The coffin of 31-year-old Mairead Farrell had just been lowered into a common grave, and the crowd was awaiting the burial of Daniel McCann, 30, and Sean Savage, 24, when the first grenade exploded about 50 feet from the graveside.

In the chaos and panic that followed, organizers screamed into a microphone, “Get down, get down!�

Relatives of the dead, terrorized by the attack, dropped to the ground, some adults lying atop their children, others still clutching funeral wreaths, sobbing, as a second and third grenade explosion were followed by rapid small-arms fire.

A woman, her face covered in blood, was lifted into the grave site enclosure, and hundreds of youthful mourners began swarming after the attacker as he retreated through the cemetery.

Some Hysterical

Shouts of “Get the bastard!� mingled with screams of the injured. Some became hysterical.

The youths chased the attacker out of the cemetery and across a four-lane divided highway before capturing him and beating him until police intervened.

A police spokesman Wednesday night said Stone was under guard at a Belfast hospital.

His use of a Browning pistol and fragmentation grenades suggested that he may have been linked with a Protestant extremist organization called the Ulster Volunteer Force, which is believed to have such weaponry.

John Jordan, a driver for ABC-TV, said the attacker ran by him, then turned and fired a shot that lodged in the vehicle’s windshield, inches from his head.

“I thought it was some kind of joke at first; then I got down in a hurry,� Jordan said.

As the crowd began closing in on Stone, funeral marshals tried to restore order around the grave site.

Gerry Adams, head of the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Be calm, be calm! Remember this is a funeral!�

After a brief pause, he pleaded, “Please, can we bury Danny McCann?�

‘Sick and Sorry Symptom’

The stunned mourners around the grave waited briefly while the final two coffins were laid to rest, and Adams gave a brief prepared speech, denouncing Britain’s role in Northern Ireland. He called the attack “another sick and sorry symptom of the type of colony we live in.�

The IRA rejected the agreement 68 years ago that gave birth to an independent Irish Republic but left the six Protestant-dominated northern counties under British rule.

Ever since, the IRA has been fighting a guerrilla war to end British administration in the north.

As Adams tried to restart the service, taxis and large black vehicles used to carry relatives of the dead in the funeral cortege were pressed into service as ambulances, taking wounded to a nearby hospital. Three of the injured were later reported in critical condition.

News of the attack stunned a city that had felt itself immune to new outrage after nearly 20 years of sustained religious violence.

Unprecedented Brutality

Attacks on funerals have occurred before, but never in such a brutal, indiscriminate manner and never with loss of life.

Three policemen were injured almost exactly one year ago when the IRA planted a bomb at a cemetery near Belfast where a reserve police officer was being buried.

Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Tom King, called Wednesday’s attack “insane and depraved� and warned that it could result in an escalation of Northern Ireland’s seemingly endless cycle of violence.

“The message that comes out of today is the utter hopelessness and futility of violence,� King said. “It achieves nothing but more misery and sadness and heartache for so many.� More than 2,600 people have lost their lives in the last two decades of violence in the province, also known as Ulster.

Emotions in Belfast’s inner-city Catholic neighborhoods, which form the heart of hard-line Irish Republican sentiment here, had already been running high after a series of recent incidents, culminating in the shootings of the three IRA guerrillas buried Wednesday.

‘On Active Service’

The three were killed as they walked from Gibraltar toward the Spanish frontier on March 6. They were unarmed at the time, although an IRA statement admitted that they were “on active service,� a euphemism meaning they were most likely preparing an attack.

A car was subsequently found in Marbella, in southern Spain, with a 140-pound bomb, and British security officials charged that the three were planning to attack a British army parade scheduled in Gibraltar two days later.

At the funerals Wednesday, the Catholic priest conducting the services, Father Tom Tonen, said the three had been murdered.

Their deaths followed by two weeks the shooting of a 24-year-old Catholic Sinn Fein supporter after he passed through a British army checkpoint near the border with the Irish Republic.

With tension running high in Catholic areas of Belfast and another IRA funeral scheduled for today--along with the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day--Adams called for calm.

“There should be no reprisal attacks,� he said. “I want West Belfast to remain calm.�

Services will be held for 33-year-old Kevin McGracken, who was shot by a British army patrol in Belfast on Monday. Police identified McGracken as a member of the IRA and said that he had fired on the patrol first.

Peace Procession

The attack Wednesday came after the funeral procession had passed peacefully through the city. Unlike previous IRA funerals, there was no police presence at all along the route or at the cemetery. The only visible security was two army helicopters hovering overhead.

A police spokesman said the decision to withdraw their presence had been made after gaining assurances from the Catholic Church and prominent Catholic politicians that the IRA would refrain from its usual military display--firing a volley of shots over the grave.

Many of those present at the grave site mistook the initial grenade explosion for an IRA salute.

Collusion Charged

At a news conference after the attack, Adams said it could only have been carried out in collusion with the security forces.

“We are asserting there was pre-notice and that there was collusion,� he said. “It was all in full view of an army helicopter.�

A police statement denied any connection with the attack.

Wednesday’s attack, coupled with a series of other recent incidents, seems certain to place additional strains on the 2 1/2-year-old agreement between Britain and the Irish Republic aimed at reducing tension in the province.

The agreement is backed by $120 million in U.S. economic assistance.