UDA attacks SDLP councillor's home

Within an hour of the latest UDA ceasefire being declared, Larne SDLP councillor Danny O'Connor blamed the organisation for attacking his Churchill Road home.

During the incident, O'Connor fired four shots into the air from a legally held personal protection weapon to scare off the attackers.

According to the councillor, he was awoken at around 12.45am on Monday 15 November by noises coming from outside his home, as a loyalist gang threw paint and a tarlike substance over his mother's car and broke the rear windscreen.

As the gang fled, O'Connor called the PSNI and some minutes later he spotted two men on his CCTV camera walking up to his house.

Thinking it was the PSNI, O'Connor left the house, only to be confronted by the pair.

Fearing the loyalists, one of whom was holding a dark object in his hand, may have been about to throw a bomb, O'Connor fired four shots from his legally held handgun into the air.

O'Connor, who has endured a vicious campaign of unionist paramilitary intimidation, said he believed his life was in danger. "There was one fella who looked to be in the act of throwing something. I don't know if it was a stone or a pipe bomb. I was really scared because I thought it might have been a pipe bomb because my late brother had been pipe bombed."

UVF attacks in Belfast

• Meanwhile, the UVF are being blamed for forcing a 42-year-old disabled Catholic man from his East Belfast home after death threats by unionist paramilitaries and an attack at the weekend in which "Get Out" and "UVF" were daubed in paint on his front door.

Maurice Magee, who has lived in a Downshire Parade flat for ten years, said he was forced to leave after the PSNI informed him earlier this month that he was under threat of death from unionist paramilitaries.

"I just can't take any more of this intimidation and have decided to leave my flat before they actually kill me," he said.

In October, a mattress was placed against his front door and set on fire while in September he had been the victim of a sectarian assault.

• The UVF are also being blamed for shooting a nationalst in West Belfast last week.

Sinn Féin West Belfast MLA Fra McCann said the shooting of Stephen McEntee on Wednesday night, 10 November, bore all the hallmarks of a sectarian attack.

The 25-year-old was hit in the shoulder by a shotgun blast fired from a passing car as he walked along St James's Avenue at around 8.45pm.

Three men in a light coloured car made their escape towards the loyalist Donegall Road. McCann said eyewitnesses heard the gunmen shout 'up the UVF' as they made their escape.

McEntee was previously targeted by associates of ousted UDA leader Johnny Adair in September, when a gunman buurst into a city centre bar and attempted to open fire but the gun jammed.