Police say loyalist feud is spreading

Police in the North have warned that the ongoing feud within the Ulster Defence Association appears to have spread to the outskirts of Belfast.

Detective superintendent Paul Hamlin said today that loyalists in Newtownards, Carrickfergus and Rathcoole are now involved in the feud between the mainstream UDA leadership and its renegade west Belfast commander, Johnny Adair.

Loyalist sources have confirmed that the leadership was responsible for the shooting of a 37-year-old man in Carrickfergus last night and the blast bomb which exploded in Adair's back garden on the Shankill Road this morning.