A senior Northern Ireland police officer has said it appears the IRA were responsible for a shooting in Derry last weekend.
Detectives investigating last Sunday night's shooting of a bus driver in the Creggan area of Derry said yesterday they believed the attack was carried out by the Provisional IRA.
Within hours of the shooting of Mr Daniel McBrearty (54) at Aranmore Avenue, normally reliable security force sources said they believed the Provisional IRA was responsible.
That belief was confirmed by Assistant Chief Constable Sam Kincaid, who yesterday stated: "Our initial investigations indicate that the Provisional IRA were responsible for the shooting of Mr Daniel McBrearty. We are extremely grateful for the assistance the public have given us to date and we are appealing for anyone who witnessed the attack or who has any information of those involved to contact CID." Two bullet cases found at the scene of the attack are to be subjected to ballistics tests by police forensic officers.
Meanwhile, a senior police source refused to be drawn on whether it was the PSNI's opinion that the Provisional IRA had broken their ceasefire.
"Such a matter is not a policing issue. It is a matter for the politicians to make the call on that one," the source said.
Mr McBrearty, who was shot three times in the legs when his bus was ambushed by an armed and masked gang as he was driving pensioners home from a day trip to Bundoran in Co Donegal, said the PSNI statement came as no surprise to him. The father of four said that because of the confirmation by the police that he was shot by the Provisional IRA, he now believed his life would be permanently in danger.
"The police assessment does not surprise me at all," he said.
"I still feel under threat from them. I'll have to watch myself from now on. I believe that maybe in the near future they may come after me again. They really want to have it their own way at the moment.
"I always had an idea it was the Provisional IRA. From now on I'll just watch where I go for the rest of my life. I'll not be going in around the Creggan as often as I used to and the same goes for down around the town."
Mr McBrearty added: "If the people who shot me had any feelings at all, they shouldn't have shot me in a bus with pensioners in it. It was a terrible ordeal for the elderly people, never mind me. I wonder how the gunmen would feel if they had a mother or father on the bus at the time."
Sinn Féin dismissed the claim of IRA involvement in Mr McBrearty's shooting, with Derry city councillor Mr Barney O'Hagan accusing the PSNI of pursuing a political agenda.
"I do not know who was responsible for the attack," he said.
"However, Sinn Féin's position on such attacks is a matter of record. They are wrong, should not happen and we are opposed to them.
"I can only draw from this that there is a clear political agenda at work here from the PSNI because of Sinn Féin and the broader republican community's opposition to the PSNI and the unacceptable policing this force embodies."