Loyalist feud: Victim of 'ruthless execution' named

Detectives tonight named a man murdered by a gang as part of a loyalist feud.

Craig McCausland, 20, was shot dead after three men broke into his home in Dhu Varran Park, Belfast, in the early hours of yesterday.

Ulster Volunteer Force gunmen have been blamed for what police described as a “ruthless execution”.

The attack was one of four shootings in less than 24 hours involving the UVF and its sworn enemies in the splinter Loyalist Volunteer Force.

Mr McCausland, who was shot several times, lived with his girlfriend, who is in her mid-20s, her nine-year-old son and six-year-old daughter.

The killers left the scene in a silver, old-style silver Peugeot 405 - registration IBZ 7522 – which was later found burned out on Cupar Way.

The retaliation killing followed three earlier attacks blamed on the LVF.

In the most serious, a man in his 20s was shot several times as he walked his dogs past a bonfire site on the Crumlin Road.

He was critically injured in the midnight shooting and underwent emergency surgery.

It also emerged that a mother and child escaped injury early on Sunday morning when shots were fired into a house on Silverstream Avenue and at a nearby address.

One man was arrested by police.

The hatred that has festered between the two organisations ever since UVF men broke away to form the LVF nearly a decade ago shows no sign of abating.

Several men on both sides have been killed as the mutual loathing and desire for supremacy sporadically erupts into all-out violence.

The latest attacks are thought to be linked to a murder in the city earlier this month.

Jameson Lockhart was gunned down as he sat on a lorry in east Belfast on July 1.

The 25-year-old victim, who was from the north of the city and believed to have LVF connections, had been clearing rubble from the site of a demolished bar when the killers struck.

The detective in charge of the latest murder investigation confirmed that officers probing the Lockhart assassination have been drafted in to hunt down the killers.