Fear of retaliatory attacks cause of Catholic mail carrier str

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Catholic mail carriers went on strike Saturday in Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city, over fears they could be targeted in revenge for the latest killing of a local Protestant.

In a related development, police released without charge five suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents who had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in Thursday's killing of David Caldwell, a Protestant who had been helping to renovate a British army facility in Londonderry.

Relatives rescheduled the funeral of Caldwell for Sunday, a day later than originally planned. Caldwell, 51, died after picking up a booby-trapped lunchbox. It was the first lethal attack to be blamed on IRA dissidents in four years.

In response, Protestant outlaws issued a vague threat to pursue a "military response" against Catholics.

Union leaders representing Royal Mail workers in Londonderry said one of their Catholic members who delivers mail on Londonderry's predominantly Protestant east side had been issued with a more specific death threat Friday. They decided no mail would be delivered in Londonderry, a predominantly Catholic city of 70,000 people northwest of Belfast, until after an emergency meeting Monday.

Union spokesman Charlie Kelly said the carriers "are out on the street in the morning, they are in the front line, and they see themselves as easy targets." He said the workers understood they were inconveniencing residents but their safety was worth more "than the price of a first-class stamp."

The Royal Mail said police were investigating the death threat.

The largest outlawed Protestant group, the Ulster Defense Association, has previously targeted Catholic mail carriers in predominantly Protestant areas. In January, the UDA killed Royal Mail worker Danny McColgan, 20, in a hard-line Protestant part of north Belfast, and Catholic postal workers in Londonderry staged a brief strike in February over similar safety fears.

Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord, which forged a joint Catholic-Protestant government for this British state, depends in part on continuing cease-fires by rival paramilitary groups -- the IRA and other anti-British groups rooted in Catholic areas, and the UDA and other so-called "loyalist" groups in the roughest Protestant areas.

Two dissident IRA factions, the Continuity IRA and Real IRA, continue to mount sporadic attacks in Northern Ireland and England in defiance of the IRA's 1997 cease-fire. Neither has issued a statement to confirm or deny responsibility for killing Caldwell.