Preliminary postmortem examinations have been carried out on the bodies of two men shot dead in a gangland-style shooting in Firhouse, Co Dublin last night.
The deputy State pathologist Dr Michael Curtis carried out the examinations and the bodies have now been removed to the City Morgue in Dublin.
Two men were shot in the head at point-blank range as they sat in a silver Lexus car in the Carrigwood area of Firhouse. Detectives are investigating if the victims were lured to the area by their killers.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said he believed the killings last night were a "very careful, cold and ruthless trap, set for two people in a rival gang". But he said he did not accept, when it was put to him by reporters, that gangland crime was now spiralling out of control.
He denied the Garda was losing the battle against gangland crime and said that if the current Operation Anvil had not been in place, many more people would have lost their lives.
"The gardaí in particular have been aware of an internecine feud between two rival gangs and they have been putting huge resources into preventing a number of deaths. The sad situation is that if they hadn't done that, several more, in fact many more, people's lives might have been lost in this whole operation," he said.
Mr McDowell said he understood the car used in the attack last night had been "sourced" in Northern Ireland last Thursday. He also understood firearms had been found in the burnt-out BMW but could not say for certain if they were the guns used in the shootings.
It is understood both men killed last night were in a silver Lexus car that was followed into the estate by the gunmen. The BMW believed to have been driven by their killers was found abandoned later in the nearby Glenvara estate.
The two dead men are believed to be in their late 20s and early 30s and from the Drimnagh and Crumlin areas.
They are the latest victims of the gangland war that dates back almost four years and has killed six people after a falling-out between two drug dealers.
Speaking before he offiicially opened the new Crime Victims' Helpline at the Garda Club in Dublin, Mr McDowell said he could not confirm the alleged killers were under surveillance: "We don't know exactly who were the people who pulled the trigger yesterday."
Gardaí sealed off the road where the car was located, a cul-de-sac that opened up onto a football pitch. Some locals reported a car chase preceding the shooting, but this was not confirmed by gardaí.
The scene was being preserved for technical examination last night, and the State the Deputy State Pathologist, Dr Michael Curtis is due to attend the scene later. A Garda spokesman said the bodies remained at the scene until then.
Gardaí have appealed for witnesses.
Locals said they heard what they believed were fireworks around the time of the shooting. One person reported seeing a body slumped in the driver's seat of the car.
There have been at least 15 other gangland-style killings this year, many of them in west Dublin. The pattern of shootings led to the establishment last May of Operation Anvil to combat organised crime in west Dublin.
Mr McDowell said Operation Anvil was "fully resourced" to continue to the end of the year.
"If we don't know who they were, we can't say they were under surveillance. But obviously the two gangs in question have been under very substantial surveillance.
"I suppose the answer to what many people are wondering today is, it goes back to the drugs issue. There are huge sums of money involved and that is why people who talk about legalising drugs or taking a soft attitude to drugs are getting it completely wrong," he said.
"It is the very sums of money themselves that create the danger for civil society, because there are people who are completely amoral, they deal in death, their coinage is death. They don't care if they kill people through supplying hard drugs or soft drugs to them and they will use death to enforce their debt collection operation and they will use death in order to knock out rivals."