UDA mount attacks

The unionist paramilitary UDA has carried out another series of sectarian attacks, putting pressure on the British government to admit that the organisation is not abiding by its professed ceasefire.

Across the greater North Belfast area and Newtownabbey there has been an increasing number of attacks on nationalist homes and property carried out by unionist paramilitaries.

Former Direct Ruler Paul Murphy officially accepted the UDA truce last November when the organisation was ‘despecified’.

The PSNI police blamed the UDA for a blast-bomb attack on the home of Catholic woman in north Belfast at the weekend.

Mother-of-two Sharon O’Shea was taken to hospital where she was treated for cuts and lacerations after the attack in the early hours of Saturday morning.

She was alone in the house in the mainly Protestant Mountainview Gardens, just off the upper Crumlin Road, when a device was thrown through a bedroom window.

The UDA has also been blamed for attacks on the homes and vehicles of Catholic families in Newtownabbey early yesterday.

Three homes were attacked with paint bombs and a works van belonging to a recently deceased man was destroyed.

“For many nationalists this has been going on for years. For many families this is the final straw,” said local Sinn Féin councillor Briege Meehan,

“The trauma and stress of people having to live with this sectarian campaign of attack and intimidation is unacceptable.”

A stand-off developed between nationalists and loyalists in the Alliance Avenue/Ardoyne Road flashpoint on Sunday night after a large number of loyalists from Glenbryn gathered in the area. A Catholic woman’s house in Alliance Avenue was later stoned.

* Two local nationalist women and a local nationalist man were viciously attacked by a group of up to ten loyalist bandsmen in the Tyrone village of Castlederg at the weekend.

A man and woman in their twenties and another girl in her teens were making their way home from a friends house when they were accosted by a group of up to ten loyalist bandsmen.

Upon asking the nationalist man for a cigarette and upon having received it, the loyalist bandsmen, who were all wearing their new “Pride of the Derg Flute Band uniforms, launched a frenzied attack on him kicking him repeatedly about the head and body while he was on the ground. The two nationalist women were also assaulted one receiving an injury to her face and the other having her hair pulled and a flute pushed into her face.

“It was only when several females who were accompanying the bandsmen shouted for them to stop that they did so.

The man was admitted to Tyrone County hospital where he is suffering from severe head and back injuries.

Urgent Appeal