NORTHERN IRELAND: IRA SHOOTING INCIDENT AT CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL

Описание: (21 Dec 1996) English/Nat

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams says the I-R-A's shooting of a policeman in a Belfast children's hospital is a matter of regret for him.

Earlier on Saturday the Irish Republican Army admitted carrying out the Friday night attack.

But the I-R-A denied it had tried to assassinate the former Mayor of Belfast, Nigel Dodds who was visiting his gravely ill 7 year old son Andrew.

Police said the gunman, accompanied by an accomplice, fired four shots before both ran off. One bullet hit an officer in the foot, another an empty infant incubator.

The I-R-A's statement to a radio station, admitting the attack, came hours after a gunman wearing an ill-fitting wig opened fire on three policemen guarding Democratic Unionist politician Nigel Dodds and his wife Dawn inside Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children.

Dodds says the attack is a sickening display of violence in the season of goodwill.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I think the first thing you've got to say is that it's hard to believe in the world today there are people that would stoop so low as to plan methodically, and calculatedly, coldly, a murder attack in an intensive care unit of a children's hospital just in the week before Christmas when there are nurses and doctors trying to save lives."
SUPERCAPTION: Nigel Dodds, Secretary, Democratic Unionist Party

The I-R-A team apparently struck after having detected a pattern in Dodds' previous trips to see his son in the hospital, which sits in the heart of Catholic west Belfast.

Police said Dodds usually did not go to the hospital with guards, and the I-R-A men may have been surprised to see them.

Dodds later emerged pale and shaken.

Dodds was twice elected mayor of Belfast and is the secretary of Ian Paisley's hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, which opposes negotiating with the Sinn Fein party and considers compromise a dirty word.

The party's leader repeated his calls for the I-R-A to surrender its weapons.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I think that the I-R-A have shown that they're outside the pale, they cannot be negotiated with and what we need to do now is to take to the dismantling of all arsenals, weaponry, murder weapons, no matter who owns them. They've got to be dismantled one by one and taken out of the community."
SUPERCAPTION: Ian Paisley, Democratic Unionist Party Leader

Nationalist politicians also condemned the shooting, and said a renewed ceasefire looked unlikely before Christmas.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"The feelings of the people, Nationalists on the Falls and Unionists on the Shank ill, are the same. They want peace. Let there be no doubt about that and there is a massive support for all those who are working for peace but there is a feeling of hypocrisy in the air in terms of the Provisional movement after what happened last night. I don't know what's going to happen over the next few days or weeks. I don't think we'll have a ceasefire before Christmas but I hope we'll have one over the next two months. there are those within the Republican movement who are working for peace. I know the Loyalists would want my colleague John Hume to continue but as I said there must be a line in the sand drawn somewhere along the line. Either they're serious or they're not serious and we're going to find out very soon."
SUPERCAPTION: Dr Joe Hendron, Deputy Leader, Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP)

Dodds' son Andrew, 7, suffers from spina bifida and has been in and out of hospital for months. On December 14th he collapsed and underwent surgery to ease pressure on his brain.









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