There were concerns last night of a heightening of the feud between the disputing wings of the UDA after two bomb incidents in Belfast at the weekend.
The foiled bomb attempts are being linked to the continuing tensions between the UDA leadership and Johnny Adair and his "C Company" of the UDA on the Lower Shankill in west Belfast.
British army bomb disposal experts were called out to deal with a booby-trap bomb left under the car of senior UDA figure John Gregg on Sunday afternoon.
Gregg, who was imprisoned in the 1980s for a failed attempt to murder the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, discovered the bomb outside his house at Nendrum Gardens, Rathcoole, in north Belfast. A number of families were evacuated from their homes while the army defused the bomb.
Gregg, the UDA's commander in south-east Antrim, is a member of the UDA leadership which in September expelled Shankill loyalist Johnny Adair and former Ulster Political Research Group member Mr John White.
Loyalist sources are linking Sunday's incident to the discovery on Friday of an incendiary device outside the home of Mr White in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim.
The sources said they feared that these incidents could exacerbate the tensions between Adair's group and the leadership.
Mr White blamed the UDA in south Antrim for planting the device and said he would not be forced from his home.
"This was an attempt to kill me and my family. I have been a loyalist for 30 years. I did not fear the IRA, and I certainly am not going to fear any loyalist," he told The Irish Times last night.
Pour people have died this year as a result of loyalist feuding. At least eight others have been injured and several families have been forced from their homes in the feuding that has involved the Adair and leadership elements of the UDA and the Loyalist Volunteer Force.
While this latest feud was said to have been settled last month with a brokered "truce" the tensions did not diminish. Adair resisted all efforts by the UDA leadership to force him to heel.
