A Provisional IRA unit from west Belfast is understood to have carried out the killing of Robert Dougan, the south Belfast Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) figure who was also suspected of drug dealing.
The killing will almost certainly lead to a retaliatory attack by the UFF, probably on a civilian Catholic target like a public house or club. There are strong fears that the UFF will mount an attack tonight after Dougan is buried.
The UFF in south Belfast is not a group known for restraint in these matters. After the splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), shot dead another former UFF member, Jim Guiney, at his shop on January 19th, the local UFF shot dead a Catholic taxidriver, Larry Brennan, seven hours later.
Both republican and security sources in the North were perplexed by the IRA's actions this week. The killing of the Catholic drug dealer, Brendan Campbell, on Tuesday was, despite claims from Sinn Fein sources to the contrary, an IRA killing, according to well-placed local sources.
Campbell had been threatened many times by the IRA. In the weeks before his death he had told people that he was again being targeted.
He had probably precipitated his own death by carrying out an amateurish booby-trap attack on the Sinn Fein office in Andersonstown, and by proclaiming that leading IRA figures in west Belfast were involved in drug dealing.
Campbell was the ninth alleged drug dealer shot dead by the Provisionals since they called their first ceasefire in August 1994. But his killing, in isolation, would probably not have put Sinn Fein's participation in the talks in jeopardy.
The IRA has been carrying out punishment shootings and beatings since last autumn, and there has been no serious attempt to question Sinn Fein's place in the talks, although such violence clearly breaches the Mitchell Principles on non-violence.
On Tuesday night, at about the time Campbell was killed in Belfast, a gang of hooded IRA men in Armagh city abducted a 35-yearold local man, forced him into an alley off Cathedral Road and shot him twice in the left knee and once in the right.
The anti-intimidation group, FAIT (Families Against Intimidation and Terror), reports that IRA punishment beatings and shootings have reached pre-ceasefire levels.
Mr Glynn Roberts of FAIT said yesterday that recent IRA beatings and shootings have been accompanied by warnings to the victims not to report their injuries to the police or to FAIT. His group had heard from a succession of victims that they had been warned that if they reported the attacks their wives or children would be killed.
FAIT reports that all paramilitary groups are involved in such violence, and there has been no sign from either the government or the main constitutional political parties that this is a threat to
??????ein's or either of the fringe loyalist parties' the places in the talks of Sinn Fein or either of the loyalist parties.
Paramilitary groups, it seemed, could retain their places so long as this violence was not admitted; what is termed "no claim, no blame".
The killing of Robert Dougan by the IRA on Tuesday afternoon is being seen in a different context. It is feared that Dougan's killing will provoke retaliation, or an escalation of violence.
According to republican sources in Belfast, the IRA unit involved would not have acted without the approval of the Belfast brigade. Although the unit contains a number of long-serving IRA members, it seems to have failed to secure its getaway.
The car used in the attack was intercepted by the RUC before it could be burned and the forensic evidence in it destroyed. The police recovered the car and are expected to be able to link forensic evidence from it with a number of men.
If ballistic tests of the rounds used to kill Dougan show they were fired by an IRA weapon, that final piece of evidence could be used to remove Sinn Fein from the talks.