Squaddies murdered in Real IRA ambush were due to fly out to Afghanistan

The two squaddies murdered in a Real IRA ambush were ruthlessly executed by gunmen who stood over their injured bodies to finish them off.

Two of their pals remain seriously injured in hospital along with two pizza delivery men – one just 19 – also mown down in the hail of automatic fire.

It has emerged the soldiers, in desert military fatigues, were due to fly out to Afghanistan just hours later.

Their aircraft left for the warzone in the early hours of yesterday with four seats poignantly empty.

The atrocity at the gates of Massereene Barracks in Antrim, as the soldiers collected pizzas, drew widespread condemnation – including from First Minister Martin McGuinness, a former IRA member.

Hundreds of tearful churchgoers from both sides of the religious divide held a vigil at the scene yesterday morning in a united show of revulsion.

Father Tony Devlin told the crowd: “Nobody wants to go back to this. We don’t want those years of the past, they were horrible years for everyone.

“In our churches today many people were crying because of the experiences they remembered from the past. They do not want it to come back again.”

One card left in tribute summed up local anger as it read: “Words can’t express my sorrow and the sickness I feel at how these people who call themselves human can murder in cold blood innocent people doing a day’s work.”

Another said: “Real men who carry guns wear a uniform and stand in a line. Cowards do not.”

The two dead men, in their 20s, are the first British soldiers murdered in Northern Ireland since Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick was shot by an IRA sniper in February 1997.

But Ulster Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde recently called in undercover soldiers for surveillance amid intelligence that dissident republicans were plotting a new outrage.

But he has ruled out putting troops back on the streets.

Two masked Real IRA gunmen lay in wait in a car outside Massereene Barracks, aware the squaddies always ordered pizzas on Saturday nights.

They opened fire as the soldiers emerged through the gates at around 9.30pm to pick up the delivery.

Chillingly, they then walked over to the injured bodies and blasted them again. The most badly injured, a Polish Domino’s worker, 32, was hit seven times. Last night his condition had improved slightly but he was still seriously ill in hospital.

Two of the other wounded are also serious while a third is serious but stable. Among them is the second delivery man, named locally as Anthony Watson, 19, shot three times in the chest and stomach.The terrorists are not thought to have come under return fire.

One security source said: “They would have been quite happy to have killed all six. Civilians didn't matter, and that’s a sign of just how desperate and determined they’ve become. As targets go, they didn’t come much softer than this.” A witness who drove by minutes later told of the carnage and said: “One soldier must have been killed instantly.

“He was spread-eagled in the road with blood pouring from his head, yet none of the police or medics were attending to him. There were other bodies lying still in the road and there was blood everywhere.

“It was horrific and the place was complete chaos. I couldn’t tell who was dead and who was alive.”

The Real IRA admitted the attack, using a recognised codename in a call to a Dublin newspaper.

A source close to the terror group confirmed its involvement to the Mirror and added: “This was planned some time ago. You don’t organise an attack like this in a few days.”

Police are now examining the gunmen’s suspected getaway car, dumped in nearby Randalstown.

The Real IRA was formed after dissidents split from the mainstream IRA in 1997 in opposition to the peace process. It carried out the 1998 Omagh bomb atrocity which killed 29.

Its level of activity later died down but has picked up over the past three years.

There are now thought to be 200--300 active dissident republicans.

Last month a 300lb car bomb destined for an army base in Ballykinler, Co Down, was abandoned near a school.

Virtually all of its recent attempts at terror outrages failed. Until Saturday.