BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Bernadette Devlin, the Roman Catholic firebrand who took the fight against British rule in Northern Ireland from the streets into the House of Commons, and her husband were shot and seriously wounded Friday in an assassination attempt.
Republican groups immediately blamed Protestant militants for the shooting at the isolated farmhouse owned by Miss Devlin, the darling of the Irish Republican Army in the late 64's, and her husband, Michael McAliskey.
In apparent reprisals, a part-time policeman was shot dead and a !63:P9:9w:P of a bomb threat.
Police said Mrs. McAliskey, 33, and her husband were both shot several times in the body. Authorities later said they were in 'very serious but not dangerous condition.' Three men were being questioned after being detained at the scene by a passing police patrol.
Police sources said three gunmen burst into the McAliskeys' unguarded farmhouse in Country Tyrone, 40 miles from Belfast, and shot the couple as they were having breakfast with their two children.
They were taken by helicopter from the local South Tyrone hospital, where they received emergency treatment, to the better-guarded and equipped Musgrave military hospital in Belfast.
Mrs. McAliskey, better-known by her maiden name of Bernadette Devlin, became the youngest member of the House of Commons on the day before her 22nd birthday in 1969, a heroine among Republicans for her speeches against British army presence in Northern Ireland.
She retired from politics in 1974 after losing her parliamentary seat. But she entered the political limelight again last year as an organizer of the H-Block Committee, which campaigned on behalf of IRA inmates in Belfast's Maze prison, who are seeking political prisoner status.
Seven convicted terrorists went on hunger strike for 53 days last year and Mrs. McAliskey appeared on Irish television recently to accuse Britain of reneging on concessions she said it made to end the hunger strike.
Republican sources said Mrs. McAliskey's involvement in the H-Block campaign appeared to be the motive for the shooting.
She lost conservative Catholic support after she had an illegitimate child in 1971, and became further alienated from moderate opinion after she lost her parliamentary seat and helped form the militantly Marxist Irish Republican Socialist party.
She married McAliskey, a schoolteacher, in 1973.
