A Protestant man has been killed in a loyalist estate in Bangor, Co Down, after a booby-trap bomb exploded under his car. The killing is being linked to a feud between loyalist factions in the town.
Some hours later, civil servants working at the Maryfield secretariat outside Belfast were threatened with a death by dissident loyalists, who told them to leave Northern Ireland or they would become "legitimate targets".
The man killed in the Bangor attack was named as Mr Glen Greer (28), who lived on the hardline loyalist Kilcooley estate in the town. The father-of-three was driving from his home when the bomb exploded shortly before midday on Saturday. He was rushed to hospital but died within an hour.
Police say the device had been placed under the floor of the Vauxhall Cavalier car and believe it may have been left there the previous night. They have appealed for anyone who noticed suspicious activity around the vehicle when it was parked on Belfast's Crumlin Road and or later in Glengormley on Friday evening to contact them.
Reports suggest that Mr Greer's killing may have been drug-related or linked to a loyalist feud. He is reported to have received a warning from the UDA in 1993 to leave the country because he was passing information on their activities to the RUC. A councillor with the Progressive Unionist Party, which has links with the UVF, Mr Ernie Steele, denied that inter-factional feuding was taking place among loyalists in Bangor.
The threat against the Maryfield secretariat, which comprises Irish and British civil servants, came in a statement from the dissident Loyalist Volunteer Force, a splinter group opposed to the loyalist ceasefire and the peace process.
In a coded statement to a Belfast newsroom, the LVF said: "Members of the Maryfield secretariat are being given 48 hours from midnight tonight to resign or become legitimate targets." Mr Adam Ingram, security minister at the Northern Ireland Office, said the people who worked at Maryfield were civil servants and "part of a democratic process". The threat was "utterly condemned" by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews. Speaking to journalists at the EU foreign ministers' meeting in the Luxembourg town of Mondorf les Bains, Mr Andrews said he deplored the threat to anyone "but more particularly to civil servants working in the secretariat". He said he would give "strong support to any action taken by the British government, in conjunction with us, to assure their safety".
Asked if he would withdraw the civil servants from the North, Mr Andrews said the issue was for each of them "but, knowing the record of service of such officials, I imagine they will stay".
Mr Andrews rejected any suggestion that leaks of Department of Foreign Affairs memos had contributed to the threat. "Anyway, as far as the Department is concerned, that's not where the leaks came from," he said.
The Maryfield secretariat was established in 1985 after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It is feared that recent publicity over leaked documents from the Department of Foreign Affairs concerning the peace process has refocused attention on the role played by Irish civil servants in Northern Ireland.