Pressure intensified on the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, to reassess her judgment that the IRA ceasefire is intact after the organisation ordered another teenager to leave the North or be shot.
A 19-year-old man from the Ardoyne area of north Belfast was seized and bundled into a car by two men at around midnight last night. He was beaten with an iron bar and told he had 24 hours to get out of Northern Ireland.
The incident brings to seven the number of teenage boys that have left the North or plan to leave as a result of similar threats. A 15-year-old youth from the Short Strand area of Belfast was told over the weekend that he had to leave by last night.
Loyalist paramilitaries have also been blamed for three separate "punishment" attacks since Sunday night.
The Ulster Unionist security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis, again called for Dr Mowlam's resignation and told The Irish Times yesterday that she had an ability to "disregard reality" with regard to the current upsurge in paramilitary violence.
"The poor woman is listening to people on the edge, not to people engaged in the heart of society. She's very much an `It'll be all right on the night' kind of person. She doesn't read her briefs and so she's in all sorts of difficulties."
Mr Maginnis said Dr Mowlam clearly had disregarded any interest in the unionist side and was failing to take note of information given to her by her official intelligence sources. The party must now demand immediate talks with the British Prime Minister, he added.
"I think it's been absolutely ridiculous for the Secretary of State at the worst crisis moment we have had for some months to be spending a day at a pop concert after having spent the previous night on an entertainment show," Mr Maginnis said.
But a Downing Street spokesman responded by saying that Ms Mowlam - who attended the Robbie Williams concert at Slane on Saturday, and appeared on Patrick Kielty's TV programme on Friday - was "doing an extremely good job in extremely difficult circumstances".
The Deputy UUP leader, Mr John Taylor, said it was not the person that was the problem but rather her policies. "She must apply immediate sanctions on Sinn Fein, such as a halt to prisoner releases, because of the ongoing violence against Catholics."
Mr Taylor added that if there were no sanctions against Sinn Fein the party was clearly not committed to democratic principles and he would refuse to sit down with its members in the review.
The anti-agreement Ulster Unionist MP, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, said yesterday that Dr Mowlam was showing a complete "indifference" to violence and that the UUP was further considering mounting a legal challenge to her ruling that the IRA ceasefire had not broken down.
Mr Vincent McKenna, of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, aided two of the five teenagers from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, who were threatened and helped them to find shelter together in London. He has also called for Dr Mowlam's resignation.
According to Mr McKenna, loyalist and republican paramilitaries were now exploiting the "green light" to carry out internal housekeeping.
"It is now time that the Secretary of State resigned for it is she that has failed miserably in both her moral and legal duty."
The human rights group FAIT also condemned the upsurge in paramilitary violence. A FAIT spokesman, Mr Sam Cushnahan, called on Dr Mowlam to review last week's decision "before any more atrocities occur".
The SDLP Assembly member, Mr Sean Farren, has described the current situation regarding punishment attacks and exclusion orders as unacceptable and said it raised "profound questions" about the intentions of the paramilitaries towards the implementation of the Belfast Agreement.
Meanwhile, the Alliance Party's Mr David Ford yesterday urged Dr Mowlam to redefine the meaning of a ceasefire following the expulsion of the seven teenagers.
Mr Ford said the expelling of alleged anti-social teenagers should be added to the criteria that are deemed to represent the breach of a ceasefire.