Sinn Fein has urged nationalists to be vigilant following a number of incidents in which it alleged loyalist paramilitaries tried to murder nationalists. The party said it was "imperative that nationalists exercise extreme caution" in the coming days and weeks. Sinn Fein said that loyalist paramilitaries had been targeting nationalists in recent days. The warning follows a bomb attack on a Catholic-owned bar near Aldergrove, Co Antrim, a gun and grenade attack on a house in south Derry, and a suspicious incident in north Belfast.
The first two attacks, in which no one was killed or injured, were claimed by a new organisation calling itself the Orange Volunteers. In the third incident yesterday a nationalist walking to work in north Belfast was confronted by what he took to be a loyalist gunman.