Last night's gun attack on a Catholic bar in Poyntzpass is the expected loyalist response to last week's republican bomb attacks on the mainly Protestant towns of Portadown and Moira.
The republican bombers who planted the bomb in Portadown probably drove north from their base in south Armagh through Poyntzpass on the A27 from Newry.
The events in this area since the start of this year are becoming troublingly reminiscent of the worst days of sectarian violence in the 1970s when republicans and loyalist engaged in a horrible spate of tit-for-tat violence in the same area.
The violence in the area from Newry across north Armagh to Lurgan and west to Dungannon in east Tyrone became so bad that it became known as the Murder Triangle. The violence of the 1970s reached its worst in January 1976 when in a two-day period the Provisional IRA shot dead 11 Protestants and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) shot dead five Catholics around the hamlet of Whitecross, about six miles from Poyntzpass.
The historical sectarian hatreds which prompted the violence of the past could be coming alive again as the local paramilitary leaders launch themselves into campaigns of murder and destruction in order to blow the present peace process off course as the North approaches a potentially historic settlement.
Although no group had by late last night claimed responsibility for the attack on Canavan's Bar it is almost certain it was carried out by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).
This is the group based in the Protestant housing estates around Portadown, only about eight miles away from Poyntzpass.
This is the group set up by the maverick UVF figure, Billy Wright, who was himself murdered by republicans in the Maze Prison just after Christmas.
His death sparked the spate of killings in the North which only halted a few weeks ago after 13 people had died.
The LVF has assumed the dominant loyalist paramilitary role outside the UVF and Ulster Defence Association (UDA) strongholds in Belfast, Derry, south Antrim and north Down.
Where there are traditional pockets of loyalist paramilitarism in the countryside around Northern Ireland, the LVF has spread its influence.
Wright's murder has served as a major recruiting agent for the group which appeals to the wild young loyalists who still see the conflict in the North in purely sectarian terms.
Since the new year, in the Protestant housing estates of Portadown, youths have been busy painting crude murals of their fallen leader. Billy Wright, in death, is supplanting King Billy on the gable walls of middle Ulster.
Last night's machine gun attack on the Catholic public house is the LVF's preferred means of retaliation for republican violence against its community. The attack was the LVF's idea of retribution for the bomb attack by republican's on Portadown town centre nine days ago.
Similarly, in the hours of darkness after Wright was shot dead in the Maze Prison, an LVF unit drove to Dungannon and fired on a Catholic-owned hotel killing one of the doormen, Seamus Dillon, a former IRA prisoner. On New Year's Eve, UDA men in Belfast, acting in consort with the LVF, machinegunned the Clifton Tavern in north Belfast killing a patron, Mr Eddie Treanor.
Most of the other LVF or UDA assassinations were of single, lone Catholics chosen at random. Two were taxi drivers. Since then the LVF, almost certainly with the help of the UDA, has begun producing bombs.
A potentially devastating type of device, a blast incendiary bomb of gelignite, petrol and ammunition was defused by the Defence Force's Border ordnance disposal team 10 days ago.
Another bomb was left in the Catholic village of Carnlough, Co Antrim, probably by LVF or UDA people from the loyalist estates of east Antrim. Three postal workers were injured last Wednesday night when a parcel bomb sent by loyalists, exploded in the sorting office in Toombe Street in Belfast.
In response to the growing threat from the LVF, the RUC has been mounting high profile patrols in surveillance cars in the estates where they operate. However, this is not proving successful in stopping the nocturnal attacks which may well spread across the North but which will, almost certainly, continue to worsen in the Armagh-Tyrone triangle.