The flags erected on the island in Bessbrook
A 68-year-old man has died after attempting to swim a cross a lake to remove two tricolour flags which had been pitched in an island in Bessbrook.
It is understood that the tricolour flags had been placed on the island around two weeks ago.
Oswald 'Ossie' Bradley had attempted to swim to the island to remove the flags and replace them with a Union flag when he got into difficulty.
A teenage boy retrieved Mr Bradley from the lake shortly after 5pm and tried to resuscitate him.
He was then taken to Daisy Hill hospital in Newry where he was pronounced dead.
Mayor of Newry and Mourne Council, Sinn Fein's Daire Hughes, had previously asked for the flags to be removed.
Ulster Unionist MLA Danny Kennedy said: "This is a very tragic outcome to controversies surrounding flags in this village.
"The entire Bessbrook community will join with me in showing our sympathy and support for the whole family circle.
"He was highly respected and liked within the Bessbrook community. I counted him as a personal friend and I am deeply upset by his untimely and tragic death."
A close friend of Mr Bradley, local Pastor Barrie Halliday, said Mr Bradley was "a very active member of the FAIR victims' group and he was deeply affected by the Kingsmills massacre and just took this as a real insult to the suffering of the Protestants that a tricolour would be raised."