LURGAN (United Kingdom), Nov 1: A Northern Ireland prison officer was killed on Thursday in a drive-by shooting on a motorway, an attack of “sheer terror” blamed on dissident republicans opposed to the peace process.

David Black, 52, was on his way to work at Maghaberry jail when a car with Dublin registration plates pulled up alongside his on Northern Ireland’s main M1 motorway and opened fire. His car veered into a deep ditch.

Politicians from all sides in London, Belfast and Dublin condemned the killing. The police said it had all the hallmarks of a dissident republican attack.

Republican dissidents have been involved in long-running protests against prison conditions inside Maghaberry where dozens of them are being held, while a number of prison officers have had to move house in the last year.

British Prime Minister David Cameron called it a “dreadful tragedy” that Black had been “so brutally murdered as he went about his work keeping the people of Northern Ireland safe”.

Cameron said his government would do everything it could to help the Northern Irish police bring the perpetrators to justice.

“These killers will not succeed in denying the people of Northern Ireland the peaceful, shared future they so desperately want.”

The Dublin vehicle was later found burnt out elsewhere in the Lurgan area, southwest of Belfast.

Republicans from the minority Catholic community believe Northern Ireland should leave the United Kingdom and join the Republic of Ireland to the south.

Mainstream republican paramilitary groups have laid down their arms and joined the peace process, but dissident offshoots remain violently opposed to the power-sharing government in Belfast, formed of Catholic and Protestant parties.

The 1998 peace accords which ushered in the devolved Belfast assembly largely ended the Troubles, the 30 years of sectarian bloodshed.—AFP