DUBLIN — Ireland's police force deployed military-style road checkpoints Tuesday as the government announced toughened measures to try to prevent a gang war in Dublin from claiming more lives.
Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said a 55-member armed police unit would be created for Dublin in hopes of suppressing what she called an "evil and sinister cycle of gangland violence."
The move is significant in a country where police typically patrol unarmed. It was announced at an emergency meeting with police chiefs following Monday night's killing of a brother of Gerry "The Monk" Hutch, a gang chieftain credited with directing many of Ireland's most famous bank heists.
Taxi driver Eddie Hutch, 59, was shot several times in the hallway of his home. He was targeted in apparent retaliation for Friday's gun attack on a boxing weigh-in being attended by senior figures from a rival gang led by Irish fugitive Christy Kinahan, the other key figure in the underworld bloodletting.
In Friday's attack, five gunmen allegedly from the Hutch camp targeted Kinahan loyalists arriving at the hotel for the boxing event. The gunmen, including three armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and disguised as an elite police unit, shot three men, killing one, in front of scores of civilians including young children.
The violence focuses on the international drug-trafficking business of Kinahan, a Dubliner who following prison sentences in Ireland and the Netherlands runs his empire from a villa in Spain's Costa del Sol. Police in Ireland, Britain and Spain opened a probe into his operations in 2008, the same year Kinahan jumped bail in Belgium over money-laundering charges.
Since 2014, the Kinahan cartel has been blamed for killing a string of former members accused of pilfering vast sums from drug deals, and this has brought him into collision with Hutch's crew, who previously cooperated with Kinahan drug traffickers. A nephew, Gary Hutch, was gunned down in Spain in September 2015 after reportedly rebuffing the demands of Kinahan henchmen for a six-figure payment.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, leader of Dublin's 1 million Catholics, rejected some politicians' calls Tuesday to serve as mediator between the Hutch and Kinahan camps. He appealed to the killers' own partners, mothers and other loved ones to apply moral pressure on them in the home and for neighbors of gangsters "to remind them they are not untouchable" by tipping off police about their activities.