Republicans say police `shot to kill' in raid

The republican movement in Ireland yesterday refrained from claiming Diarmuid O'Neill, the man killed in the police raid on an IRA house in London earlier this week, as a member of the IRA, referring to him in its weekly publication, Republican News, simply as "an Irishman".

Instead, the newssheet concentrated on alleging that the unarmed O'Neill died in "an elaborate shoot-to-kill operation", and announced that a protest picket would be held at Downing Street on Sunday. It declared: "The killers riddled their victim with bullets and dragged his body from his home... [then] fed the media the story that the young man had been killed in a gunbattle."

In propaganda terms the Republicans are evidently making as much mileage as possible from whether police were justified in shooting O'Neill.