trim nationalists attacked
BY LAURA FRIEL
``We have no doubt they did this because we are Catholics,'' said Paula Reid after a loyalist gun attack on her Cloughmills home. The attack took place in the County Antrim village shortly before midnight last Sunday.
The family's two youngest children, a girl aged 14 and an 11-year-old boy, were being looked after by their eldest son (18) when loyalist gunmen fired a number of shots through the front door.
All three children were asleep upstairs at the time. Una Reid said she was wakened by a loud noise downstairs. ``There was a bang and my brother shouted that there was a hole in the door and to phone daddy,'' said Una. ``You hear about Catholic homes being attacked all the time but you never think it would happen to your own.''
The children's distressed parents, Paula and Gerard, were only a short distance away and arrived back within minutes of the attack. ``It was pure luck that none of our children were hurt,'' said Gerard. His eldest son had gone upstairs to bed only moments before the shooting started.
Paula said her family has lived in Cloughmills for 18 years and they wouldn't be intimidated out of the home they loved. Graffiti scrawled on the front door step saying ``easy'' is believed to be the work of the attackers. ``My children were an easy target,'' said Paula.
Sinn Féin representative for the area, Philip McGuigan, blamed the UVF for the recent attacks on Catholics in the village. ``A UVF man has recently moved into the area and he seems to be orchestrating the attacks,'' he said.
This was the latest in a series of attacks on Catholic-owned premises and homes in Cloughmills in recent weeks. A local pub was attacked with a pipe bomb and shots have been fired in the village. The attack occurred within 36 hours of petrol bomb attacks on two Catholic-owned businesses in the village's main street.
Meanwhile, a loyalist gang attacked two Catholic schoolboys in Antrim town. A bottle was smashed over one child and the second had two fingers broken during the attack. The gang, all in their late teens, targeted the two much younger children when trouble flared outside St. Malachy's High School.
The gang, all over school age, claimed they had carried out the attack on behalf of the UDA. Fear of further attacks has meant that pupils have had to be escorted to buses home by teachers.
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