A prison officer's wife has undergone surgery following a loyalist pipe-bomb attack on the family's home in north Belfast. The couple's four-year-old daughter was also injured.
The attack was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, which has been used as a cover-name for both the UDA and the LVF.
The group said it was in retaliation for the alleged "harassment" in Maghaberry Prison, Co Antrim, of UDA commander Johnny Adair and another leading loyalist Gary Smyth.
However, Mr John White, the former chairman of the UDA's now defunct political wing, said he had spoken to Adair on the telephone and he and Smyth wished to dissociate themselves from the attack and the Red Hand Defenders' statement.
Mr White said he was not aware of any claims of harassment from loyalist prisoners in Maghaberry prison. He believed the attack and the statement were an attempt to blacken both men's names.
The prison officer, his wife and daughter were watching television in the living-room of their home in Westway Park when the pipe bomb was thrown through the window on Sunday night.
It caused extensive damage as the family fled the room. The father attempted to shield his daughter from the blast. She was treated in hospital for cuts to her back. Her mother underwent surgery to remove shrapnel from her back and legs. The prison officer escaped injury.
It is understood that the family are not returning to the house. A neighbour said: "I heard a big bang and I ran out onto the street. A car with three men in it was speeding off. The wee girl and her mother were crying and screaming. They were hysterical. They were both bleeding."
The mother of the injured woman said the family was stunned by the attack. "It was aimed to kill. The people who carried it out went back to their houses after they wrecked another family's home."
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a substantial device had been used and warned that someone would be killed if such attacks did not stop.
The chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, Mr Finlay Spratt, said the attack was "totally unacceptable".
The North's Security Minister, Ms Jane Kennedy, described it as "despicable and utterly contemptible".