The UK Unionist Party leader Mr Robert McCartney, has claimed that loyalist paramilitaries were behind a shooting in Bangor, Co Down on Thursday night in which a man in his 20s was critically injured.
The man was hit several times in the chest when he was attacked at Ballywalter Gardens in the loyalist Kilcooley estate on the outskirts of Bangor.
Despite his injuries the man managed to drag himself to a main road, where the alert was raised.
An ambulance rushed him to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast where last night he was in a critical condition.
Police believe the shooting was not sectarian. The wounded man is a nephew of a man who was shot dead a few streets away in the same estate last July. A year earlier a man was killed in a bomb explosion. These two incidents are said to be connected to a local feud involving loyalist paramilitaries.
Mr McCartney, MP for the area, complained of the rise of "gangsterism" in Bangor. He said there had been a number of shootings in his constituency which were related to "vendettas" over drugs.
Mr McCartney claimed there was a rise in drug-dealing involving the UDA in his area. He said loyalist prisoners released under the Belfast Agreement were engaged in drug-dealing.
Mr McCartney claimed the British government was turning a blind eye to this involvement because it did not want to undermine the Belfast Agreement. He also claimed the IRA was creaming off money from other drugdealers.
The North's security minister, Mr Adam Ingram, said those responsible for the Bangor shooting "were thugs who have no place in a democratic society".
Mr Stewart Currie, a North Down councillor with the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked with the UVF, lives on the Kilcooley Estate. He blamed elements moving into the estate from Belfast for the series of shootings.
"I would like to think there was no paramilitary involvement and that the police will be allowed to get on with their inquiries," he said.
