INLA sources have denied that the murder of Mr Kevin McAlorum in front of school children in Belfast yesterday was an 8-year-old feud being revisited.'s murder
Primary school children and their parents watched in shock and horror yesterday as gunmen shot dead Mr McAlorum at an integrated school in south Belfast yesterday morning.
The carefully planned ambush was staged shortly before 9 a.m. at Oakwood school at Derriaghy, between Belfast and Lisburn, where Mr McAlorum, a former senior figure in the INLA, had just left off a child to school.
He was driving his Audi A4 from the school when a white van blocked his exit, according to police. Two gunmen jumped out of the van and shot him a number of times. They escaped in a blue Nissan Almera car, which was later found burning behind a pub on the Stewartstown Road in west Belfast.
Some parents and teachers cried to the children to "duck" and "get down" as the gunmen fired at their victim at close range, eyewitnesses reported.
Some of the children and their parents were close by the scene of the shooting while others heard the shots. Badly shaken parents and teachers had to try to calm the children, many of whom were terribly shocked by the experience. "The reason I sent my child to an integrated school was to try and escape all this," one woman said.
Republican and other sources named the murdered man as Mr Kevin McAlorum (31), who was associated with the INLA and was an alleged major drugs dealer. A former republican prisoner, he was released in 2000 under the early release system of the Belfast Agreement.
Police were last night trying to firm up what was the motive for the murder. One theory was that it resulted from a feud involving organised drugs gangs while some provisional republicans queried if it was a case of "old scores being settled".
Mr McAlorum was linked to the 1996 internal INLA feud, which left six people dead, including the victim's nine-year-old sister, Barbara. The feud erupted after INLA leader Gino Gallagher was shot dead in a dole office in west Belfast in February 1996.
It ended seven months later in September 1996 when the faction loyal to Gallagher murdered the leader of the opposing group, Hugh Torney in Lurgan.
Five of the six people who died in the dispute were killed by Gallagher's faction, including Barbara McAlorum, who was shot dead as she played with a jigsaw in her home in north Belfast in March that year. Several others were shot and wounded.
Torney, who was at the centre of the previous 1987 INLA feud in which 12 people died, was blamed for ordering Gallagher's killing. At the time in 1996 it was viewed as a pre-emptive strike as he feared that Gallagher planned to kill him.
Yesterday's victim, Mr McAlorum, was accused by the INLA wing loyal to Gallagher of actually carrying out the Gallagher killing on the instructions of Torney.
Sources close to the INLA continued to insist yesterday that Mr McAlorum, with another man who is still alive, was the gunman who shot Gino Gallagher. They denied, however, that the INLA killed Mr McAlorum yesterday.
"This wasn't a case of getting revenge for Gino. The feud ended when Hugh Torney was killed. That was the agreement at the time, and the INLA would not break that agreement. Otherwise what would be the point of having mediation in feuds?" said a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, which is linked to the INLA.
The brutal and callous nature of the killing was widely condemned, although among INLA figures and other republicans in west Belfast there was little sympathy for the dead man.
However, PSNI Superintendent Roy McComb said: "Once again the streets of Belfast are covered in the blood of another victim. No matter who this man was nobody has the right to take his life."
The Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, said the killing was an appalling "act of barbarism".
Local DUP MP, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, said: "Any violent incident like this cannot be justified but for someone to deliberately carry out this action at a time and a place when there was such a serious risk to children and parents is completely despicable." His colleague and Assembly member, Mr Edwin Poots, suggested that the IRA could have been involved as the killing happened in an area "controlled by the Provisional IRA".
However, local Sinn Féin representative, Mr Paul Butler, said: "Whatever the motivation this killing was wrong and should not have happened."
Local SDLP Assembly member Ms Patricia Lewsley urged people to assist the PSNI in its inquiries. "No one has the right to take the law into their own hands. The heartless brutes who have carried out this shooting must be punished for what they have done," she added.
Newly-elected Alliance Belfast Lord Mayor, Mr Tom Ekin, said the murder was "especially despicable given that it was carried out as children were making their way into school".