THE INLA killers of nine-year-old Barbara McAlorum were as evil as the man who carried out the Dunblane massacre, a Catholic priest told mourners at her funeral in north Belfast yesterday.
Father Aidan Brankin, the chaplain of the Star of the Sea primary school which Barbara attended, said it was a "horrible waste of a beautiful life".
Barbara was shot when a gunman opened fire into the living-room of her home in Skegoneil on Friday night. She had been playing with a jigsaw moments before her death. It was covered with her blood. Mr Ciaran Scott (19), who was injured in the attack, remains critically ill in hospital.
Barbara had learned sign Language to help her mother, who is deaf and dumb, communicate. "She was my wife's ears and speech," said her father, Kevin.
Republican sources have said Barbara was not the intended victim of the attack. The shooting was carried out by associates of the former INLA leader, Gino Gallagher, who was murdered in January.
Several hundred mourners attended Requiem Mass for Barbara at St Kevin's Church in North Queen Street yesterday. Her classmates carried wreaths in the shape of teddy bears.
Father Brankin said: "During the past few days in all the schools in the parish, we have been praying for all those murdered in Dunblane.
"Now this awful tragedy has struck Barbara's family, school and community. In Scotland, many people have been talking of how evil the gunman was. The gunmen who murdered Barbara and those responsible for sending them out, are just as evil."
The Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh, presided over the service. "Once again the good name of Ireland has been besmirched," he said.
"Those who seek a spurious excuse will say `it was a murder attempt which went wrong'. It didn't go wrong: it was wrong. Wrong in itself, wrong from the very first moment of its conception to the moment of its execution."
Barbara was carried from the church in a small white coffin. She was buried in the same plot as her grandparents in the City Cemetery on the Falls Road.