There are fears today that the latest inter-loyalist feud could spread beyond the Co Antrim town of Carrickfergus.

Stormont Minister Margaret Ritchie was today backed over her October 9 deadline for loyalist Ulster Defence Association disarmament.

There are fears of more inter-loyalist violence in the North following a pipe-bombing over the weekend linked to a feud within the UDA.

The North's largest paramilitary group was warned today Government funding for its political wing could be cut off unless it decommissions its weapons.

Top loyalists Andre and Ihab Shoukri have been thrown out of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the paramilitary organisation said today.

Loyalists arrested during a raid on a Belfast bar were meeting to plan an end to all Ulster Defence Association crime and violence, a court was told today.

PSNI chief constable Hugh Orde is seeking to have a prominent Belfast loyalist returned to jail for attending an alleged UDA meeting in the city last week.

Murdered ex-paramilitary boss Jim Gray was buried in total ignominy today.

The funeral of former UDA 'brigadier' Jim Gray is taking place in east Belfast this morning.

Sinn Fein has accused the British Government of treating the spiralling number of UDA attacks against Northern Catholics with complacency.

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.

Both the SDLP and Sinn Fein have urged the British Government to declare that the UDA is no longer on ceasefire.

Hardline unionist Assembly member Ian Paisley Junior claimed the planting of the bomb in Ballycastle yesterday could have made the Omagh bomb ‘‘look like a small incident in the Troubles’’

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.

The so-called ‘Red Hand Defenders’ has claimed responsibility for the pipe bombing of a hotel in Ballycastle, Co Antrim, this morning.

The UDA is being blamed for a pipe bomb attack in Belfast.