Loyalist feud ‘puts 150 lives at risk’

NEARLY 150 people have been warned their lives may be under threat from feuding loyalist paramilitaries.

The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) said the Ulster Volunteer Force’s latest shooting war with the rival Loyalist Volunteer Force, which left four men dead this summer, involved the worst violence it has ever investigated.

The four-man team’s new dossier accused the UVF of trying to wipe out the smaller organisation and claimed its political representatives in the Progressive Unionist Party had lost any control over it.

Its report said: “This feud has erupted in bloodthirsty thuggery between paramilitary groups.

“A number of explanations have been offered to us: the history of rivalry and hatred, personal animosity, the LVF’s involvement in drugs, allegations and counter allegations about treachery, criminal competition, greed and power.

“We believe that, while the recent escalation of the feud may have boiled up as a result of local animosities set against the history of longstanding rivalry, the UVF leadership has decided that now is the right time to finish off the LVF.”

The commission compiled a special report on the bloody fall-out between the two organisations after it flared on the streets of north and east Belfast this summer. Ten men have been shot dead since expelled UVF men formed the splinter faction in 1996.

But tensions which have festered from the murder of Brian Stewart in May last year erupted into an intense six-week murder spree.

Between July 1 and August 15 the UVF assassinated four men it believed to be associated with its sworn enemies.

There were also dozens of other attacks, including: 17 attempted murders (15 by the UVF, two by the LVF); six shooting incidents; 18 explosives or petrol bomb incidents; and a car ramming, according to the IMC.