UK News 22-08-2000 Troops Return To Streets Of Northern Ireland who: British troops what: Return to streets after loyalist violence where: BELFAST when: Yesterday snippet: "Troops were back on the streets of Belfast last night after two men were shot dead in a loyalist feud," says Patrick Griffin in The Sun today. "They were called in amid fears the province could descend into chaos with a new round of tit-for-tat killings." UDA supporters Jackie Coulter and Bobby Mahood were shot eight times through the window of their Range Rover. Mr Coulter died instantly, Mr Mahood a few hours later in hospital from a wound to the stomach. "Within minutes of the shooting, the UDA retaliated," says The Guardian. "Supporters charged up the nearby Shankill Road and set fire to the offices of the Progressive Unionist Party, the UVF`s political wing". "The scenes from loyalist west Belfast yesterday plunged Northern Ireland back into its most dangerous days, from a time which was supposed to have been consigned to history," writes a sombre David Sharrock, Ireland Correspondent for The Telegraph. "It made Tony Blair`s handwritten promise to the law-abiding people of the province that all paramilitary violence would end ring hollow amid the din of gunfire." The decision to send the troops in was made by Peter Mandelson, who described the fighting between loyalist paramilitary groups the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) as "squalid, murderous, gang warfare". [... more]

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