Loyalist paramilitaries can strike with immunity, a former IRA prisoner who survived a terrorist attack claimed tonight.

It is possible that members of the Ulster Volunteer Force may have been behind an attempt to bomb a seaside town earlier this week, a leading loyalist politician claimed today.

The RUC has arrested a man in connection with the loyalist car bomb that was planted in Ballycastle, Co Antrim while thousands of tourists and locals were attending the annual Auld Lammas Fair.

Security sources in the North have said they believe the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force was responsible for a car bomb planted in Ballycastle, Co Antrim yesterday.

There is clear evidence that the ceasefire of Northern Ireland’s largest loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association, is in some areas ‘‘completely non-existent’’, a nationalist minister in the Stormont Executive claimed today.