FACTBOX: The Real IRA

(Reuters) - A brigade of the Real IRA republican splinter group has claimed responsibility for the killing on Saturday of two British soldiers outside an army base in Northern Ireland.

Following are key facts on the Real IRA.

-- It was formed in 1997 when it split from the mainstream Irish Republican Army, whose political wing Sinn Fein had entered talks aimed at ending decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

-- In August 1998, months after the signing of the province's Good Friday peace agreement, the Real IRA carried out the deadliest bombing of Northern Ireland's decades-long "Troubles," killing 29 people and wounding more than 200 in the town of Omagh. Eleven years later, no one has been convicted of the attack.

-- In 2000 it carried out an audacious missile attack on the London headquarters of Britain's foreign espionage agency MI6; in 2001 it shook the BBC's London television center with a large car bomb and wounded seven people with another in west London. In November 2007, the Real IRA claimed responsibility for shooting two off-duty policemen in what was seen as an attempt to stop Catholics from joining the Northern Ireland police.

-- It is an illegal organization in the Republic of Ireland and classified as a terrorist organization in Britain and the United States.

-- Northern Ireland police chief Sir Hugh Orde said last week the threat from republican militants had never been higher during his seven years in charge of the force.

(Compiled by Stefano Ambrogi and Mark Trevelyan)