The British government yesterday warned the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) it would face "very serious" consequences if it continued to carry out pipe-bomb attacks against Catholic targets in Northern Ireland.
Loyalist sources yesterday said the UDA was responsible for another spate of overnight attacks, which are part of continuing sectarian tension in north Belfast. Rioting broke out in the Whitewell suburb on Thursday night.
Sources in north Belfast say the UDA, also called the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), is responsible for most of the attacks, but that attacks have also been made on Protestant property.
The IRA is suspected of throwing coffee-jar bombs in the Whitewell area earlier this year. It is also suspected that the splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), has been carrying out nail-bomb attacks against Protestant targets.
A Catholic couple who have lived in their north Belfast house for 35 years said yesterday they had been forced to leave following a pipe-bomb attack.
Mr Dermot and Mrs Dolores Hoy's home has been attacked 21 times this year. They live near one of the sectarian interfaces in the Oldpark area.
They were in the living room of their house on Thursday night when a pipe-bomb exploded in their back garden, shattering windows in their conservatory.
The Oldpark area, sometimes known as Murder Mile, has seen some of the most bitter sectarian violence of the last 30 years, suffering almost one-fifth of the total casualties of the Troubles.
A second device exploded two doors down from the Hoys, in a house belonging to a Protestant neighbour. Ms Nora Meekin was in her garden when the device landed and exploded at her feet, but she was uninjured.
Although it was the first pipebombing they had suffered, Mr Hoy said they had been stoned regularly. Mrs Hoy suffered a brain haemorrhage last year, from which she is still recovering.
Mr Hoy said he and his wife would now stay with their daughter in the countryside. He hoped eventually to move there once they had sold their house. "The Housing Executive is buying it. There's no one else you could sell it to," he said.
Mr Hoy said that in the wake of last year's loyalist feuding on the Shankill a "certain element" of Protestants had moved into a nearby development, who "brought their hatreds and their prejudices with them".
"I don't think it is a personal thing, that it is us they want to attack," said Mr Hoy.
"It is just that they know there are Catholic people living here and they want to attack Catholics." Mr Hoy said he was proud to have many Protestant friends but said of the bombers: "The fact that they call themselves Protestants is an insult to the Protestant people".
Yesterday the Northern Ireland Office Minister, Mr Des Browne, said: "These continuing sectarian attacks are intolerable. They must stop".
He said the organisational position of the UDA/UFF was "not yet fully clear" but they should stop the attacks. The implications for loyalist groups engaged in the "despicable" acts, "implications that must be well understood by the UDA and others", would be serious, he added.
Last night the newsroom of Ulster Television received a coded statement from the group calling itself the Red Hand Defenders claiming responsibility for the Deerpark attacks and warning: "The situation is that when Protestant homes are attacked so are nationalist ones".