Politicians in the North have condemned an attempt at the weekend to murder a man in west Belfast. The SDLP Assembly member for West Belfast, Dr Joe Hendron, said it was now imperative that the Northern executive was formed.
Mr Francie Pettigrew (49), a Catholic, was giving a 14-year-old girl a lift home after a cross-community event when at least one gunman fired between five and seven shots, at Snugville Street in the Shankill area of west Belfast, at about 10 p.m. on Friday night.
The community worker said he was lucky to be alive, and believed he was targeted because he was a Catholic. The girl had just got out of his car, he said, when he spotted a man behind a wall.
"He came running across the road towards me. I just put the car into gear and got going. I don't know how I did it. I just knew I had to get away," Mr Pettigrew said.
One bullet hit the driver's door, while the others shattered the windows of a nearby pub, but no one was injured.
Dr Hendron appealed to unionists and the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, to implement the agreement, otherwise "the continuing vacuum in the peace process will be filled by further shootings like this".
Mr Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein accused mainstream loyalists of being responsible for the "carefully planned attempt" to kill Mr Pettigrew. "We have seen a dramatic upsurge of loyalist attacks over the last number of weeks. Last night's shooting is yet another attack in the long line of such incidents," he said.
Mr Kelly said he believed that the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, must share some of the responsibility for the incident because of "his failure to break the deadlock" in the peace process.
The leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, Mr David Ervine, criticised Sinn Fein for pointing the finger at mainstream loyalists. He rejected their claims, and said it was clear that Sinn Fein was operating on analysis and not intelligence. "We have a designated group of people who have all the intelligence to say who did this - the RUC. And we have to wait for this," he said.
Mr Ervine said it was likely that dissident loyalists would carry out further attacks while politicians attempted to resolve the current deadlock.
Sir Reg Empey of the UUP expressed concern at the attack. He said it was an attempt to provoke the IRA and destroy the peace process.