The RUC has said it cannot yet say which loyalist paramilitary group, if any, was responsible for the murder of a Catholic man at a GAA club on the outskirts of Belfast on Friday night.
The RUC Chief Constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, said yesterday that the "cowardly murder" of Mr Gerry Devlin (36) bore all the hallmarks of a random loyalist sectarian killing. He said it was "much too soon to pinpoint which group, if any, has been involved".
Initially the Loyalist Volunteer Force, which draws most of its support from the Portadown area and is opposed to the loyalist ceasefire, was thought to have been responsible for the murder, but the involvement of dissident elements of the UVF has not been ruled out.
Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the UVF, said he believed the killing had not been carried out by "mainstream loyalists", but by those against the peace process. He said those who wanted to destabilise the process had "pathetic little soldiers" willing to carry out such actions.
Meanwhile, the president of the GAA, Mr Joe McDonagh, said he had no doubt that the only reason Mr Devlin was murdered was that he was a hard-working member of the GAA, dedicated to serving his community. He described the killing of the father of two at St Enda's GAA club in Glengormley as a "callous murder".
Mr McDonagh said that while many GAA clubs had suffered sectarian attacks over the years, St Enda's had been continually targeted. A former chairman of the club, Mr Sean Fox, was murdered by loyalists in 1993. In May of this year, a prominent member of the GAA in Bellaghy, Mr Sean Brown, was murdered. The LVF was widely blamed for the attack.
The local Ulster Unionist MP, Mr Clifford Forsythe, said it was "impossible to get inside the mind of someone who does this sort of thing, and the twisted logic of going along and picking someone to murder".