The Times (with others) is reporting that a police officer has been shot and killed in an attack in Northern Ireland. Mistakenly, the paper is saying that this is the third member of the security forces to die in the last 48 hours. The two soldiers killed on Saturday were not "security forces". They were just soldiers, who happened to be based in Northern Ireland.
The paper goes on to say, correctly, that this marks a dangerous and sudden escalation in violence in the province, which threatens to draw a counter-reaction from loyalist paramilitaries. "We are tonight staring into the abyss," says Dolores Kelly, a member of the nationalist SDLP who sits on the province's policing board. "I would appeal to people to pull back."
However, fresh graffiti in a loyalist area of Lurgan, close to last night's shooting said: "An eye 4 an eye – back 2 war". Please … no! No more.
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