McDonald warns of increase in UDA violence

A Whitewell resident shows where unionist paramilitaries planted a bomb in his garden

South Belfast UDA Brigadier Jackie McDonald warned at the weekend of a "long hot summer", as the number of sectarian attacks being carried out by the UDA across the Six Counties increases.

The small Longlands Estate off the Whitewell Road was attacked twice on Sunday 18 April. In the first incident, up to 20 masked loyalists crossed the Arthur Bridge, as the PSNI watched, and attacked homes in the estate.

Sinn Féin Councillor Danny Lavery accused the PSNI of, "colluding with loyalists", as they stood by during the morning attack. At 7.30pm that evening, a number of petrol bombs were thrown into the estate and exploded outside the home of a wheelchair bound woman.

In the early hours of the same day, a Catholic man was viciously beaten and stabbed with broken bottles in Glandore Avenue in North Belfast by two loyalists as he made his way home. The man's ear was almost severed in the sectarian attack but surgeons managed to save it by inserting 32 stitches into the gaping wound. The victim also needed eight staples to close an open wound to his head.

On Thursday 22 April, loyalists used a pipe bomb, packed with shotgun pellets, to attack the home of a Catholic family living on the main Whitewell Road.

Lavery also called on unionist politicians and community workers to, "use their influence to calm the situation in the Whitewell and not to inflame things.