Northern Ireland police arrested a 19-year-old man yesterday on suspicion of gunning down two British soldiers last month, the first such slayings in more than a decade of peacemaking.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said the suspected IRA dissident was arrested in the overwhelmingly Irish Catholic village of Bellaghy. He faced interrogation over the March 7 attack on off-duty, unarmed soldiers who were collecting pizzas outside an army base. Two died and four others, including two pizza couriers, were wounded in a hail of bullets fired by two masked men.

Members and supporters of Irish Republican Army dissidents have mounted more than a dozen car hijackings and bomb hoaxes this week across Northern Ireland, and also tossed Molotov cocktails at a Protestant community hall in Belfast, in hopes of raising communal tensions to breaking point.