Statement by TUV East Belfast candidate John Ross:
“I was honoured this morning to take part in the annual commemoration of the 18 soldiers, 16 of whom were members of the Parachute Regiment, brutally murdered at Narrow Water in 1979.
“Narrow Water was a particularly brutal terrorist attack with 12 of the soldiers were murdered when a second bomb was detonated while those injured in the first explosion where being treated or airlifted from the scene of the first explosion.
“Shamefully, while two known IRA men were arrested by Garda leaving the scene no one has ever been charged with these murders. Vital forensic evidence was also “lost” by the southern authorities.
“Narrow Water is a case which continues to raise many troubling questions about the IRA and security forces in the Republic. Shamefully, those questions are seldom asked and there is little prospect of Dublin, which frequently lectures the UK government on legacy matters, providing the answers which the families of those killed on that day still demand.
“That said, events like today are important in reminding us of the debt we own to the security forces in which I served.”