NI militant group dumps weapons -watchdog

Confirming what sources close to the militants told Reuters on Saturday, the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) said the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) had got rid of all its weapons and ammunition.

"The IICD can confirm that it has conducted events in which quantities of firearms, ammunition, explosives and explosive devices belonging to the INLA have been decommissioned," it said in a statement.

"The events were attended by witnesses chosen by the INLA," said the IICD, set up by the British and Irish governments in 1997. "The INLA representatives have informed us that the arms decommissioned constitute all of those under the control of the INLA leadership."

The INLA had said in October its armed struggle was over and its formal decommissioning marks a further step in the peace process days after Northern Ireland agreed a deal to take full control of its own police and justice system.

A small but ruthless splinter group, the INLA killed Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave with a bomb under his car in the House of Commons car park weeks before she was elected prime minister in 1979.

Fighting between pro-British and Irish nationalist groups killed 3,600 people before a 1998 peace deal that was followed by pledges by the main militant organisations on both sides including the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to disarm.

Two major pro-British groups also disposed of their weapons in recent months but sporadic violence has slowly increased since Republican dissident groups killed two British soldiers and a policeman in March last year.

The INLA, politically to the left of the IRA, was involved in at least 120 murders during the decades of bloodshed. It was also responsible for the killing of 17 soldiers and civilians at the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly in the Northern Irish county of Derry three years later.

(Reporting by Ian Graham; Writing by Andras Gergely in Dublin; Editing by Charles Dick)