Irish National Liberation Army says it's disarmed

DUBLIN — The Irish National Liberation Army, a ruthless IRA splinter group responsible for some of Northern Ireland's most notorious killings, said Saturday it has surrendered its weapons just days before an Anglo-Irish disarmament deadline is due to expire.

Two representatives of the outlawed organization told The Associated Press that the INLA handed over weapons stockpiles to Northern Ireland's disarmament commission at secret meetings in November and January. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they could face arrest if identified.

The INLA weapons surrender is expected to be confirmed Monday by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, an expert panel that Britain and Ireland formed in 1997 to oversee the disarmament of several illegal groups based in the British territory of Northern Ireland.

The pace of paramilitary disarmament has picked up over the past year after Britain and Ireland announced their intention to shut down the commission this month. A law permitting paramilitary figures to hand over weapons without risk of prosecution is scheduled to expire Tuesday.

Disarmament commission spokesman Aaro Suonio said he could not confirm or deny whether the INLA had surrendered weapons recently.

From 2001 to 2005, the commission oversaw the gradual disarmament of the Irish Republican Army — by far the most elaborately armed group during the three-decade conflict over Northern Ireland. Two outlawed British Protestant groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defense Association, have disarmed over the past year. The INLA is the last truce-observing group to make the move.

The INLA killed more than 110 people from its 1974 foundation to its 1998 truce. In the decade since, its members have killed or wounded more than two dozen people, mostly criminal rivals.

In October, the INLA announced it had renounced violence and would disarm.

The breakaway gang was born amid bloody internal feuding within IRA circles in the mid-1970s. INLA leaders proclaimed devotion to Marxism and hostility to the burgeoning political realism of some IRA leaders.

It sought to overtake the IRA as the major anti-British paramilitary group and, for several years, its high-profile killings did upstage the much larger IRA.