Nationalist politicians have accused the UVF of breaking its ceasefire after security sources blamed the loyalist organisation for a number of recent attacks on republicans in Ballymena, Co Antrim.
Two men were being questioned by police last night about pipe-bomb attacks. On Monday a prominent Sinn Féin representative, Mr Michael Agnew, discovered a pipe-bomb under his car, which was defused by British army bomb disposal experts.
Police described the device as sophisticated and designed to kill. Another local nationalist was the target of a hoax bomb the same day, while three weeks earlier pipe-bombs were discovered under the car of a Sinn Féin member in Ballymena.
Informed security and political sources say the attacks were the work of the UVF, which declared a ceasefire in October 1994.
This has caused political and security concern as this appears to be the first time in recent years that the UVF has targeted republicans. The UVF has killed several people since 1994, most of them in loyalist feuds.
Planned bomb attacks on the Auld Lammas Fair in Ballycastle two years ago, and the St Patrick's Day parade in Belfast last year also had the potential to cause widespread death and injury. Fortunately both attacks were thwarted.
But to directly target republicans has the potential to lead to tit-for-tat violence.
Mr Billy McCaughey, a Ballymena representative of the Progressive Unionist Party which is linked to the UVF, said he was satisfied the UVF was not involved.
But Mr Philip McGuigan, who won Sinn Féin's first Assembly seat in North Antrim in last November's election, said his election and the emergence of Sinn Féin in Ballymena had triggered this loyalist response.
The SDLP Assembly member for North Antrim, Dr SeáFarren, said it was clear the attacks were neither "sporadic nor freelance" and illustrated the dangers of a "slide back into organised violence", which must not be tolerated.
SDLP members in Ballymena have also been targeted by loyalists in recent years. Dr Farren said the SDLP, in its dealings with the Independent Monitoring Commission, had made it clear that the UVF's "much-vaunted no-first-strike policy was a transparent mockery".
He added: "All paramilitaries must cease all their criminal and violent activities. There is no longer any room for ambivalence on links to violence."
