Politicians on both sides of the divide between the Protestant and Roman Catholic communities in the province denounced the killing as the work of “terrorists,” and called on anyone with knowledge of the killers to step forward and help the police, despite the deep mistrust for the force that lingers among Catholics from the past, when the police were widely regarded as allies of the Protestants.

With three members of the security forces killed in less than 48 hours, there were fears that the fragile peace that culminated with the establishment of a power-sharing government in May 2007 might be at risk.

The reaction in Craigavon, on one of the main roads from Belfast to the border with the Irish republic, suggested that for now, those concerns might be overblown. The town, in the county of Armagh, a major sectarian battlefield in the past, has a mixed population of Catholics and Protestants, but people approached at random at the site of the shooting and in shopping malls seemed confident that the peace would survive the shootings.

A 25-year-old Catholic man who gave his name only as William said that he supported Sinn Fein, the main nationalist party in the power-sharing government, and that he “feared something like this was going to happen” when I.R.A. sentiment split over the peace agreement. “There is still a small minority out there who agree with shootings and all that,” he said. “I don’t agree with it myself. There was a time when I may have agreed with it. But it is the wrong time. Violence is in the past.”

Image Credit... The New York Times

The killing in Craigavon was the first time that a police officer had died from a politically motivated attack since the old Royal Ulster Constabulary was reformed in 2001 and renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The force has been sharply reduced in size, shorn of a paramilitary wing known as the “specials” and set on a course to even out a recruitment policy that for decades had favored Protestants over Catholics.