Murder fuels marching season gang war fears

FEARS of a new shooting war between rival loyalist gangs on the streets of Belfast at the height of the Protestant marching season intensified last night after the murder of a man in the east of the city.

The victim, Jameson Lockhart, in his late twenties, was sitting in the cab of a red lorry outside a demolished bar on the lower Newtownards Road at around 10.15am when a gunman opened fire on the left hand side.

A colleague, who was sitting with him, escaped from the tip-up lorry which rolled forward and struck a lamppost, knocking it towards a loyalist paramilitary mural near where the bar once stood.