UDA ‘must take responsibility for tensions in estate’
After a night of violence on a loyalist housing estate in Bangor, Co Down, resulted in police firing six plastic bullets, the Stormont deputy first minister and Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern expressed concern about the rioting, insisting it was unacceptable.
As they opened a cross-Border road link near Newry, Mr McGuinness said: “I think it is quite clear from the way events moved that it was organised.
“So there is a responsibility here on the UDA to recognise that this is unacceptable behaviour and that they have a responsibility to de-escalate situations that may occur within society.
“If people have complaints about the activities of the police service in terms of how they go about searching houses for drugs and so forth, then they should make those complaints to the Police Ombudsman.
“But what happened on the streets — using guns, using violence against citizens and against policemen — is totally and utterly unacceptable.”
Police fired plastic bullets after coming under attack from a gunman and a mob of up to 200 people on the loyalist Kilcooley Estate in the seaside town of Bangor on Monday.
The disturbances erupted after raids in the neighbourhood earlier, which police said were linked to serious crime in north Down associated with the UDA.
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