February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Loyalists and dissident republicans were blamed for the attacks, which included a gun attack on the home of a woman and her 7-year-old daughter in Derry and bomb alerts in West Belfast.
Police said paramilitaries were to blame for the gun attack on Sunday night, which was being treated as attempted murder.
A number of shots were fired into the living room window of the house in Bond Street. The woman was showered with glass, although she and her daughter were not hurt. The family had moved to Derry from Belfast several months ago, but it was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack.
In Belfast, a bomb was defused outside the office of Community Restorative Justice, an alternative justice program supported by republicans. A hoax device was also left outside the office of SDLP politician Alex Attwood.
Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen blamed dissident republicans for the incident outside Attwood’s office, the third time the Policing Board member has been targeted in a month.
Cowen said dissident republicans were “cowardly thugs who wish to turn the clock back on policing reform.”
Meanwhile, the feud between rival loyalist groups that left one man dead was settled, according to one of the antagonists.
The Loyalist Volunteer Force said it was moving to “disarm and disband those who sparked the latest in-fighting” with the Ulster Volunteer Force.
LVF member Brian Stewart was shot dead two weeks ago during the latest round of fighting between the two groups, which dates back to a 1996 split.
The killing was followed by a spate of bomb attacks, mainly on homes in East Belfast. But a settlement was reached after talks involving a number of intermediaries, including a Protestant minister.
Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine, whose party is aligned to the UVF, said the group “will be keeping a watching brief” after the LVF statement.
“I believe the UVF will be judging it by actions or lack of action rather than by words,” he said.
“If it holds, then it is good news for the unionist community who through a process of recurring feuds have suffered enough. It should allow us all in the loyalist community to get on with the life that we have to live.”