BELFAST -- A Protestant paramilitary organization claimed responsibility Friday for killing three young Catholics at a mobile food shop, declaring it a reprisal for an Irish Republican Army attack and warning of further killings.
The Protestant Action Force, the cover name for the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force, said it carried out the murders Thursday night of two teenage women inside the shop and a 29-year-old man who rushed to their aid because the business owner was a 'known IRA killer' and one victim was a supporter.
The killings at a predominantly Catholic housing development in the town of Craigavon, 20 miles west of Belfast, stunned Ulster as it headed into Easter weekend, and religious leaders appealed for an end to the spiral of violence.
There were fears of further bloodshed coincident with commemorations of the April 1916 insurrection against British rule that led to Ireland's independence and British control of Northern Ireland.
Constabulary officials said Friday a masked man killed the victims but that an accomplice may have driven the getaway vehicle, a stolen Ford van later found abandoned and burned out. A massive manhunt was under way.
Police said the van pulled up to the mobile food truck and the man jumped out, opened the doors of the food truck and fired an automatic weapon at the women seated inside, Katrina Rennie, 17, and Eileen Duffy, 19, killing them instantly.
Witnesses said a 14-year-old girl was forced to kneel outside the shop and witness the execution of Bryan Frizzell, 29, who had rushed to the scene to help. The gunman ordered Frizzell to lie down, then shot him twice in the head, boarded the van and sped away.
'The Protestant Action Force claims responsiblity for the attack on the mobile shop owned by known IRA killer John Jenkinson,' the group said in a statement to the British Press Association office in Belfast. 'Eileen Duffy is a known Republican.'
Police confirmed they warned Jenkinson last year that he was on a death list.
The statement said the attack was a 'direct reprisal' for a March 21 IRA attack in which the widow of a policeman killed in 1987 was shot and wounded -- the first woman target in Ulster's sectarian strife for many years.
'The PAF gives warning that all Republican businesses and their staff and all who serve and employ Republican terrorists or Sinn Fein members shall be regarded as legitimate targets until such time as the IRA withdraws its threats of assassination completely against all Protestants, irrespective of their occupation,' it said. Sinn Fein is the political wing of the IRA.
'We warn all members of the public to stay away from all businesses owned and staffed by known republicans.'
Protestant terrorists have already killed 12 people in the area this year.
A senior British politician renewed demands for Ireland to surrender its constitutional claim to strife-torn Ulster, where more than 2,800 people have died in sectarian violence since 1970, and the Royal Ulster Constabulary said the killings 'represent sectarianism of the most evil kind.'
'It is that claim which is one of the factors which generates the violence,' said Ivor Stanbrook, chairman of the British government's parliamentary committee on Northern Ireland.
'If those who have done this claim to be acting on behalf of any Protestant interests whatsoever, they have to be totally repudiated by the Protestant population,' said Protestant Primate of All Ireland Robin Eames.
'They have no mandate to do this. They are acting on their own. They have to be shunned and put away from society at large,' he said.
The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Britain, Cardinal Basil Hume, also condemned the murders, which came just three days after the British secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, secured agreement from the Ulster political parties to join negotiations with Ireland and Britain on the future control of Northern Ireland.
Sinn Fein rejected participation in the talks as futile, raising fears of continued sectarian strife.
