SF accuses Britain of complacency in face of UDA attacks

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

Speaking in Belfast, party chairman Mitchel McLaughlin said Britain is providing political cover for the loyalist paramilitaries, who, so far this year, have been blamed for more than 200 pipe-bomb attacks, two murders, several attempted murders and an attempted bomb attack on a fair in Co Antrim on Tuesday.

"Everyone understands perfectly well that if it was the IRA that was involved in 200 bomb attacks or gun attacks, [the British Government] would be jumping off the skyscrapers in indignation," he said.

"We need to hear and we need to see from the British Government that they are sincere and that they are committed to building up politics here as opposed to violence."