After a Catholic taxi-driver narrowly escaped another murder attempt in Belfast the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) has said that its campaign of violence will continue. It has now issued a number of death threats against Catholic community workers.
The LVF is believed responsible for the attack in the early hours of yesterday morning on Metro Cabs in north Belfast. A lone gunman entered the company's offices around 3 a.m. and pointed his weapon at the desk clerk, who dived to the floor.
According to the taxi depot employee the gun jammed, and although the gunman tried to free the weapon by banging it on a table he could not get it to work. The gunman then left the building, and the clerk contacted one of his drivers to alert the police.
The clerk, who did not wish to be identified, said he was the "luckiest man alive . . . Basically, I thought I was dead". While he was terrified he planned to continue working. "I have to work, I have three mouths to feed," he said.
The owner of Metro Cabs said police had warned him that his company was on an LVF death list. Last week a hoax bomb was left at the premises. He said employees were feeling very vulnerable in the face of such attacks.
Two Catholic taxi-drivers, Mr Larry Brennan and Mr John McColgan, have been murdered in the past nine days, and another driver managed to escape his would-be killers in north Belfast.
The attack was followed by a statement from the LVF yesterday, using a recognised codeword, rejecting pleas from politicians and senior clergymen, and warning that its wave of killings would continue. "Reports that the LVF may call off its campaign of violence are total and utter rubbish," it said.
"The LVF will carry on with its campaign until the Irish Republic drops Articles 2 and 3 of its Constitution, and stops interfering with the internal affairs of Northern Ireland once and for all," the LVF added.
The Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action (NICVA) yesterday condemned threats issued against cross-community workers in the name of the LVF. The individuals were singled out "purely because they are Catholics involved in cross-community activity", said the NICVA.
Mr Seamus McAleavy, deputy director of NICVA, deplored the "campaign of frightening intimidation that is ongoing at present, particularly in the mid-Ulster area". He called on voluntary and community organisations across Northern Ireland to support the ICTU-organised peace rallies organised for Belfast and other areas for Friday.
"In this way we have a chance to send out a message to those committing the murders and issuing threats, that we are opposed to their actions. Sectarian killings must stop, threats of murder must stop. Those involved should listen to the will of the people," Mr McAleavy added.
Sinn Fein's Northern chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said the LVF statement was a "chilling reminder of the real and immediate threat to the lives of all nationalists". He said the murder campaign against nationalists was designed to "stop political change, and to force nationalists to accept less than their democratic rights.
"Sinn Fein will not be deflected from the task of securing a democratic conclusion to this conflict," Mr McLaughlin added.
In response to the upsurge in violence, Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT) yesterday published a 10-point anti-violence charter. A spokesman, Mr Glyn Roberts, said the aim of the initiative was to pressurise paramilitary groups into ending their violence.
Meanwhile, a man and two women were being questioned last night after a handgun was recovered by police following a search of a house in west Belfast late on Monday night.
