The RUC last night issued a warning to people who took drugs at a party in west Belfast to seek urgent medical attention. Three young men died at the weekend in the worst tragedy of its kind in Northern Ireland from taking a drugs cocktail including morphine and diazepam.
An ambulance was called to a house in the Whiterock area just off the Falls Road in the west of the city at around 9 a.m. yesterday.
Ambulance men recovered the bodies of two men, Mr Eamon McCoubrey (22), of Hannahglen Heights, and Mr Jim O'Connor (20), of Beech mount Drive, from a house at Westrock Green.
An hour later the body of Mr Thomas Sterritt (18), was found at his home at Tullymore Walk in the nearby Andersonstown area.
The three spent Saturday night in a nightclub on the Falls Road and had gone on to a party at the Westrock Green house.
Post-mortems will be held this morning and the authorities are awaiting detailed results of the toxicology tests.
Northern Ireland's chief ambulance officer, Mr Roy Trimble, said his staff faced distressing scenes when they arrived at the Whiterock address.
"Before the crew arrived at the scene they were told that they had one male patient downstairs," he said. "When they arrived they found that the patient was deeply unconscious.
"But before they arrived they were told by ambulance control that there was a second patient, also probably unconscious.
"The third person was at a different location, albeit nearby. It was all extremely upsetting for our crews to see young lives lost like that."
An RUC representative said that apart from their official warning about morphine and diazepam, police would not speculate on the cause of death until the result of the post-mortems were known.
Several people said they had heard the young men had taken a mixture of ecstasy and morphine, possibly from a supply for animal use. The North's drugs co-ordinator, Ms Jo Daykin, described the deaths as "a terrible tragedy".
"Three young people are dead this morning and their families are torn apart . . . I don't want to add to it other than to give a general warning to young people to stay safe and not to become involved in drugs of any kind."
Sinn Fein MLA Ms Sue Ramsey said: "I would appeal to all young kids in west Belfast and to anybody who was at that particular party to go and seek medical attention. There is a possibility that drugs were taken - although there is nothing confirmed yet - and that if they don't seek medical attention we could be looking at further deaths."
In the Westrock estate yesterday there was an air of shock and disbelief. One man said the young people had been partying non-stop since Friday.
"They were always having parties in that house, with lots of people coming from outside the area. They did not really seem to mix that much with local people here.
"Still, I can't believe this has happened. The first time I knew there was something wrong was when the ambulance pulled up this morning. What an awful tragedy."
A teenage girl, who said she was a friend of Mr O'Connor's girlfriend, was still visibly in shock.
"Lizzie [the girlfriend] told me she woke up this morning and there he was in bed beside her, dead. He had just stopped breathing. I don't think she will ever get over this."
Use of opiates has spread to Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland over the past five years. Previously, the North had been largely free of drugs such as heroin, although soft drugs such as cannabis were more widely available.