Victims' reaction: Mina Wardle, a Shankill woman who has lost friends, family and neighbours in the Troubles, was biting her lip and trying to keep back the tears.
"This has been a real emotional roller coaster of a day," she says, holding a copy of the IRA's statement in her hands. "I feel something really significant has happened today. There's an awful lot in this. I just hope people's hopes aren't being built up, only for them to be shattered all over again."
All day relatives of victims have been arriving at the Shankill Stress and Trauma Centre, which she helped to found 18 years ago. Many have been tearful, others have been angry, but everyone says they hope the statement proves to be significant.
"I must have talked to around 60 people, and most of them are saying, 'Is it real?' A day like this opens up all the old wounds," says Mina, now in her 60s, who lost most of her hearing following an IRA bomb in March 1972. "People try to deal with the stress and trauma during their day-to-day life, but when something like this happens, the hurt can spill out all over again."
Most of the relatives of victims arriving at the centre lost loved ones in the IRA bombs which rocked the Shankill Road over the last 30 years.
In all, along a 200-yard stretch of the roadway, it is estimated that up to 45 people died. They are remembered mostly by the names of the pubs that were destroyed: Cornetts. The Fourstep Inn. Mountainview.
But the most resonant in this loyalist heartland is the October 1993 bomb at Frizell's fish shop.
On October 23rd, 1993, IRA members Seán Kelly and Thomas Begley carried a bomb into the fish shop of John Frizell on the Shankill Road. Moments later the bomb exploded, killing Begley and nine others instantly. Kelly survived.
A few yards up the road from where the bomb exploded is the bar of the Ulster Rangers Supporters' Association. Inside, the reaction to the IRA statement is more hostile.
However, the sharpest criticism is directed at the release of Seán Kelly from prison the previous night, just hours ahead of the IRA statement.
"If Tony Blair released one of the Underground bombers from prison, how would that go down in Britain?" said one 63-year-old.
"He served three years for killing nine people, what kind of justice is that?" he asked.
There is just one voice of quiet optimism on the streets of Shankill. It comes from 21-year-old Samuel Young, a student, standing outside Campbell's fish and chip shop.
"It's positive. I know others feel different about it all, and maybe I haven't gone through what others have, but it can only be a good thing.
"Anything which is about getting back to normal has to be good."
