Plea to people of Ulster

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33676, 28 October 1974, Page 13

Plea to people of Ulster

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) BELFAST, October 27. The Northern Ireland Administrator (Mr Merlyn Rees) today made an impassioned plea for public help in ending Ulster’s spate of sectarian murders. “These crimes are a brutal, senseless, and arbitarary form of inter-communal violence,” he said. “These killings simply represent the basest of human motives: the desire to kill and to maim for its own sake. “I know the community, as a whole, shares my abhorrence. Now is the time to give effect to this feeling by condemning these crimes as a whole, whoever perpetrates them and whoever are the victims, and I urge people of both communities to come forward with evidence.” As Mr Rees was speaking, the latest victim of the attacks, a Roman Catholic youth, aged 18, lay seriously ill in hospital, having been shot in the head, chest, and thigh last night as he walked with his girl-friend in a Protestant district of Belfast. Two masked gunmen opened fire in a Belfast bar last night, injuring three drinkers. The men walked into the bar, in the mainly Roman Catholic market area of the city, and fired several shots from automatic pistols before running off. In Londonderry three youths blew up a Customs post after ordering out the officers there at gunpoint. Nearby, three other youths planted a bomb in a petrol station. It destroyed a pay kiosk, but the petrol tanks were not ignited.