IN the same week that 16 Scottish schoolchildren were shot dead, the INLA chose to kill a nine year old girl as she did a Snow White jigsaw on the living room floor of her home in north Belfast.
Followers of Gino Gallagher, the extreme republican paramilitary figure shot dead at the Falls Road employment exchange on January 30th last, are believed to be responsible for shooting dead Barbara McAlorum on Friday evening. Kieran Scott, the 19 year old visiting the house, was also shot and is critically ill.
Barbara's father, Mr Kevin McAlorum, said he had been told that the INLA had killed his daughter, but said he had no idea why his home was attacked. He said: "I've never had any dealings with that organisation."
The wanton brutality of the incident is typical of INLA actions.
According to republican sources in Northern Ireland, Gallagher's followers were unrepentant about the murder of the child. They have also vowed to carry out further killings to avenge Gallagher's death.
Gallagher's followers also killed John Fennell (40) one of the founding members of the INLA, at a caravan park in Bundoran, Co Donegal two weeks ago.
It is believed Fennell was tortured before being killed by having his skull smashed with a concrete block. He had been betrayed by his own associates to members of Gallagher's faction who travelled to Bundoran to "interrogate" and kill him.
According to the republicans, Fennell "confessed" to playing a part in Gallagher's murder and implicated four others. These four men, including Gallagher's predecessor as "chief of staff" of the INLA, have been, in their words, "sentenced to death".
The feud is the latest and ugliest in the history of an organisation which ha5 a deserved reputation for being the most vicious paramilitary group to have emerged from the conflict in Northern Ireland.
The authors of the book on the INLA, aptly entitled Deadly Divisions, have said feuding is a "replicating virus" among INLA members.
The latest feud has been bubbling under the surface since the August 1994 IRA "cessation" of its campaign. The decision by the IRA to restart its bombing campaign has allowed the INLA row to break out into a shooting war.
When the IRA called its ceasefire, a row broke out between the INLA leader in Belfast, who agreed with the IRA request to end INLA armed activity, and an INLA figure in Dublin who disagreed with the ceasefire on principle but was prepared to observe a cessation for practical reasons.
The Belfast figure threatened the Dublin man, who then drew away from the organisation. When the Belfast man was arrested last year, his second in command in Belfast, Gino Gallagher, assumed the title of "chief of staff" and stated that he was opposed to a ceasefire, allying himself with the Dublin INLA. Although Gallagher made a number of statements about taking armed action against the security forces, this was never carried out. He did, however, attract a number of young men into the organisation.
The feud began developing seriously last autumn, with both sides arming themselves and preparing for the inevitable shooting match.
The former leader was first off the mark with the assassination of Gallagher as he signed on for unemployment benefit at the Falls Road offices of the Department of Health and Social Services.
Gallagher's followers claim that under "interrogation", John Fennell admitted that the former INLA leader paid gunmen in Belfast to carry out the killing. They say Fennell admitted delivering the money to the gunmen, whom he named during the hours prior to his death in the caravan park in Bundoran.
Gallagher's successor, a north Belfast man, last week issued a statement ordering his opponents to disband. It is unlikely they will comply.
Despite the claims by its political wing, the Irish Republicans Socialist Party (IRSP), that it is a revolutionary socialist organisation, the INLA has disintegrated into a state of near permanent feuding and gangsterism.
Informed republicans say membership of the INLA now requires only an ability to be more vicious than your opponent.
One figure referred to the murder of one of its leading Belfast gunmen, Gerard "Sparky" Barkley, in the mid 1980s, as an example of the darkness that inhabits the minds of the INLA's leaders.
Barkley, a small slight man in his late 20s, was the INLA's leading gunman in Belfast and had killed three members of the security forces and a prison officer. Despite this, he fell into disfavour with the then leader, Dominic McGlinchy.
Barkley was lured to Dundalk, on a pretext, by his opponents and shot in the back of the head as he watched television in McGlinchy's house.
Of the five people involved in Barkley's death, four are dead - McGlinchy and his wife, Mary Paul "Bonanza" McCann, from West Belfast (who shot himself while drunk as he was about to be arrested by the RUC); and Gino Gallagher. The only surviving conspirator in Barkley's death is the last but two "chief of staff" who allegedly ordered Gallagher's killing and who is now himself the subject of an execution warrant.