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The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gunned down Brian Stewart, of the breakway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) as he sat in his car in an industrial estate.

They fired about five shots at him at close range. He died at the scene.

Sources close to the LVF last night said that Mr Stewart was not a high-ranking member of the LVF although other loyalist sources described him as an “LVF commander”. ind who did this.”

Tensions between the UVF and LVF have been constant since Mid-Ulster UVF leader Billy Wright was stood down by the organisation in 1996 and formed the LVF. They regularly flared in serious blood-letting.

This latest incident follows from a number of recent shootings in Belfast and reports that a number of UVF members had been warned by the police that they were under threat from the LVF.

The murder was also linked to serious violence which erupted during the Irish Cup final at Windsor Park earlier this month.

Yesterday’s murder was the third in six months linked to the UVF.

There are fears that the UVF is abandoning a potential political direction following a poor performance in November’s Assembly election by its associated political party, the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP). Financial sanctions recently imposed on the PUP by the Independent Monitoring Commission recently also infuriated the party, which has declined to comment on the murder.

Tensions between the LVF and the two larger loyalist paramilitary groups, the UVF and UDA, had reportedly been simmering in recent months. The LVF has previously been associated with the breakaway UDA grouping associated with Belfast maverick Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair. That group was largely forced into exile by a UDA purge on the Shankill Road last year.

Sinn Féin councillor Joe O’Donnell said nationalists and unionists living in east Belfast would be concerned by yesterday’s murder.

“People in east Belfast generally will be nervous that this killing will mark the beginning of yet another period of internecine loyalist feuding,” he said.

“Nationalists in the area will be concerned that this sort of internal loyalist feuding will eventually lead to attacks on the local nationalist population, particularly as we approach the summer marching season.”

* Unionists have been blamed for a number of stoning attacks on Catholic homes in Portadown, Co Armagh yesterday.

A group congregating near a loyalist bonfire at Edgarstown, close to the so-called ‘peaceline’ in the town, had targeted Catholic homes in the nationalist ‘Tunnel’ district.

John O’Dowd said he believed that “sinister forces” were to blame for incidents in the Obins Drive and Obins Avenue area and were attempting to increase tensions.