Dissident Republican groups are posing their biggest security threat to Northern Ireland for six years, an independent observer group said on Wednesday. Skip related content
Sporadic violence in the province has increased in recent months since republican dissidents killed two British soldiers and a police officer in two separate attacks in March, threatening a decade-long peace process.
"The overall level of dissident activity was markedly higher than we have seen since we first met in late 2003," the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) said in a report.
"The seriousness, range and tempo of their activities all changed for the worse in these six months," the IMC said.
The March killings marked a low point since a 1998 peace deal mostly ended 30 years of conflict between the IRA, seeking a united Ireland, and groups wanting to maintain British control of the province.
More recently a car bomb hurt a police officer's partner in Belfast in October, a month after a huge bomb was defused and a small device exploded outside the home of parents of a police officer.
The Commission said the two main dissident republican groups, the Continuity IRA, which shot dead the policeman in March and Real IRA, which claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers, remained "extremely active and dangerous."
The Commission -- which was set up in 2004 and reports every six months on the activity of paramilitary groups -- said most new recruits to the dissident organisations are inexperienced young males.
It also said that there are indications that former republican militants "have as individuals provided services in some instances to dissident republican groups."
However, the unanimous condemnation of recent violence -- including by the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein -- indicated the robustness of the peace process, the report added.
The British and Irish governments are urging the local parties to agree a date for transferring policing and justice powers to Belfast from Westminster.
Sinn Fein is eager for the move, but the largest political party in Northern Ireland, the Democratic Unionist Party, is resisting the move saying insufficient confidence exists in the community from which it draws support.
(Writing by Antonella Ciancio, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Members of a gang arrested in Peru have confessed to killing people and extracting their body fat to sell to international cosmetic companies, police claim.
