Sectarian killers return
One man dead and a second critically injured
Loyalist gun gangs struck twice within the hour yesterday, Wednesday 6 December, as they targeted two Catholic men in North Belfast, killing one and critically injuring a second.
30-year-old Gary Moore from the north County Derry town of Limavady was working in Monkstown on the outskirts of North Belfast when two men approached him and shot him dead at approximately 4pm. Moore was hit in the head and upper body and died at the scene.
As An Phoblacht goes to press, no organisation has accepted responsibility for the shooting, although Monkstown, an area on the northern outskirts of Belfast, has a reputation of being a UVF stronghold.
Meanwhile, as news of the Monkstown killing was just sinking in, a second gun attack on the Oldpark Road in North Belfast left Paul Scullion from the Ardoyne area critically injured.
Scullion, in his early 20s, was sitting outside a row of shops at the junction of the Oldpark Road and Rosapenna Drive when a gunman who was a pillion passenger on a motor scooter fired between three and six shots, hitting the victim in the stomach and groin. He was rushed to the Mater Hospital where his condition was described as critical.
In November 1992, three nationalist men were killed when UDA gunmen opened fire indiscrimanantly in Murray's bookies shop, just yards away.
Both of these latest attacks came within 24 hours of the killing of 35-year-old Trevor Kells.
Kells was killed on Tuesday 5 December at 11.30pm after he went to pick up a fare in his taxi in the loyalist Hesketh Road, off the Upper Crumlin Road.
As yet there is no indication as to who killed Kells, although loyalists are denying the killing was part of the UDA/UVF feud that has left seven people dead since August.
In a hard-hitting statement, Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly urged nationalists to be on their guard after the Tuesday night killing when it was revealed that loyalist politicians were insinuating that the killing was sectarian. In the event, Kelly's was a tragically prophetic warning.
``The circumstances surrounding the killing in Hesketh aren't totally clear, but I have absolutely no reason to believe that nationalists were involve,'' said Kelly on Wednesday evening. ``Those who were implying that the killing of Mr Kells was sectarian were in reality setting the scene for attacks on nationalists such as those that left one man dead and another fighting for his life.''
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