A police officer has died following a shooting incident in County Armagh.
It happened near Lismore Manor in Craigavon as police investigated reports of suspicious activity.
Two vehicles were sent to the area and as officers got out of one, shots appear to have been fired, injuring one officer who later died of his injuries.
The attack followed the weekend murder of two soldiers outside an Army base in Antrim. The Real IRA said they were responsible for that shooting.
First Minister Peter Robinson described the latest killing as "an evil deed".
"I am sickened at the attempts by terrorists to destabilise Northern Ireland," he said.
"Those responsible for this murderous act will not be allowed to drag our province back to the past."
DUP assembly member David Simpson described the attack as an "outrage" and said those behind it were "vermin".
"What we have seen over the last 36 hours is a deliberate and sustained effort by terrorist murderers to try to drag Northern Ireland back to the worst days of Ulster’s past," he said.
‘Brink’
Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein Policing Board member, said that the murder was "yet another awful tragedy".
"I would like to send our condolences to his family and express our disgust and anger that this has happened tonight again, after the weekend."
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UUP Deputy Leader Danny Kennedy said: "These terrorists seem totally incapable of understanding that they are flying in the face of the overwhelming will of the people in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland who want peace and political stability."
SDLP Upper Bann assembly member Dolores Kelly said Northern Ireland was on the "brink".
"We are staring into the abyss," she said.
"There is little point appealing to the people who planned and did this, but all of us have to realise we are on the brink of something absolutely awful. All of us have to get together to pull ourselves back from the brink."
Alliance Party leader David Ford said the murder "must be condemned by all right-thinking people".
Leadership
"The public’s resolve has been strengthened against these elements, everyone has spoken with one voice to say that peace is the only way forward," he said.
"There must be calm at this time. Political representatives again need to show leadership."
The outgoing Chairman of Northern Ireland’s Policing Board Professor Sir Desmond Rea also condemned the murder.
"His murder, following upon the killing of two young soldiers and the injuring of four civilians, is a step back into a past which the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, in the Republic of Ireland and these islands had hoped that they had left behind," he said.
In the weekend attack Sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, from Birmingham and Patrick Azimkar, 21, from London, were shot dead at Massereene Army base, Antrim.
The soldiers were killed as they accepted a pizza delivery at about 2120 GMT on Saturday.
Four other people, including two pizza delivery men – Anthony Watson, 19, from Antrim and a Polish man in his 30s – were injured in that attack.
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