The World - News from March 14, 1989

IRA gunmen shot and seriously wounded an off-duty soldier in the locally recruited Ulster Defense Regiment who was out walking his dog in Londonderry, Northern Ireland police said. The Irish Republican Army, fighting to end British rule in the troubled province, claimed responsibility for the attack on what it calls a prime “soft target”--part-time soldiers. In Belfast, the Royal Ulster Constabulary began closed-door disciplinary hearings against 22 police officers implicated in allegations of a “shoot-to-kill” policy against Irish nationalist guerrillas. The investigations followed the killings of six unarmed men, five of them guerrillas, in 1982.