Dissident threat to N. Ireland rising - watchdog

By Anne Caldwallader

BELFAST (Reuters) - Dissident Republican groups are posing their biggest security threat to Northern Ireland for six years, an independent observer group said on Wednesday.

Sporadic violence in the province has increased in recent months since republican dissidents killed two British soldiers and a police officer in two separate attacks in March, threatening a decade-long peace process.

"The overall level of dissident activity was markedly higher than we have seen since we first met in late 2003," the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) said in a report.

"The seriousness, range and tempo of their activities all changed for the worse in these six months," the IMC said.

The March killings marked a low point since a 1998 peace deal mostly ended 30 years of conflict between the IRA, seeking a united Ireland, and groups wanting to maintain British control of the province.

More recently a car bomb hurt a police officer's partner in Belfast in October, a month after a huge bomb was defused and a small device exploded outside the home of parents of a police officer.

The Commission said the two main dissident republican groups, the Continuity IRA, which shot dead the policeman in March and Real IRA, which claimed responsibility for killing the soldiers, remained "extremely active and dangerous".

The Commission -- which was set up in 2004 and reports every six months on the activity of paramilitary groups -- said most new recruits to the dissident organisations are inexperienced young males.