Loyalist gang attacks Catholic teenager in Coleraine

A Catholic teenager has been attacked and beaten up by a loyalist gang in Coleraine, police said today.

The attack on the 17-year-old was being treated as a sectarian hate crime, confirmed a police spokeswoman.

The victim was approached, assaulted and verbally abused in broad daylight in a carpark in the Co Derry town’s Long Commons.

A group of five young men, described as wearing hoodies, carried out the attack at around noon on Monday and called the victim “a Fenian b*****d”.

Police appealed for anyone who witnessed the attack to contact them.

The teenager was not understood to have suffered serious life-threatening injuries.

Community tensions have continued to run high in Coleraine in the wake of the murder by a loyalist mob of Catholic community worker Kevin McDaid in May. Ten people have so far been charged in connection with his killing, six with murder.