WORLD BRIEFING / NORTHERN IRELAND

Three masked Irish Republican Army dissidents fired a volley of gunfire over a dead comrade’s coffin in the most public display of paramilitary defiance Northern Ireland has seen in years.

The tribute was to John Brady, 40, an IRA veteran who hanged himself last weekend while in police custody. Such funeral displays were once common in the British province but had disappeared during the last decade of peacemaking.

Leaders of the Protestant majority said police should have tried to arrest the gunmen, but officers said they kept their distance to ensure no conflict with the 400 or so mourners.