INO back colleagues in North

The Irish Nurses Organisation has expressed support for colleagues in the North who staged protests over paramilitary death threats.

Around 800 nurses from three Belfast hospitals took part in a demonstration today after receiving death threats from the UDA and the Catholic Reaction Force.

David Hughes, a spokesman for the INO, said: "Even in warfare, it is recognised that medics and nurses and doctors are not part of the war and that everybody is cared for.

"It is extraordinary that people who provide care without fear or favour and, without recognition of creed or difference, provide care to everybody - that they themselves should be sought out and threatened in this way."