Shock at heavily guarded Armagh village

An eerie silence prevails at the checkpoint on Green Road. One of three main routes into Bessbrook, it is blocked off by white tape on both sides. Police and soldiers guard the scene where Lance-Bombardier Stephen Restorick (23) was killed by a sniper's bullet.

There is little sign that this is an entrance to the busiest heliport in Europe. Then suddenly a helicopter flies over. Out in the fields, soldiers can be seen checking the undergrowth with sniffer dogs.

Bessbrook was originally a Quaker village. In modern times it has expanded greatly and its population is now about 60 per cent Catholic, 40 per cent Protestant. It remains a neat and litter-free village with well-kept houses and no pub.

It is also in the heart of what has come to be called "bandit country". An MP for the area, Mr Seamus Mallon, described Bessbrook as probably the most heavily guarded village in Europe.

The SDLP deputy leader pointed out that there had been a complete absence of violence in south Armagh in recent times. "A cynical conscious decision was made by the IRA that, when there was an incident in south Armagh, death would result", he said. "South Armagh is not freelance country. The decision to deliberately shoot and kill a soldier was centrally made." Local people were shocked by the killing. "It is absolutely awful", said Ms Concepta Laughran. "Nobody wants that here."

The local priest, Father Sean McCartan, recalled 1994, the year of the ceasefires. "It was also the year Bessbrook celebrated its 150th anniversary and community relations made great progress", he said. "The checkpoints were, removed and everybody benefited.",

The local Presbyterian minister, the Rev Robert Nixon, recalled the massacre at Kingsmills, in which 10 Protestant workers were taken off a bus and shot dead in January 1976. He felt that people tended to look at things in isolation, but said the Kingsmills killings were directly linked to the massacre of two Catholic families the previous day.

Like the rest of the community in Bessbrook he is deeply saddened by the soldier's death.

So too is Mrs Lorraine McElroy, who was injured when the bullet - which killed Lance-Bombardier Restorick ricocheted off his rifle, and grazed her forehead. Mrs McElroy was in hospital when a nurse told her the soldier had died. "It was really terrible", she said. "It was like the death of somebody I had known very well."