Two loyalist paramilitary groups caused confusion yesterday when both admitted responsibility for a grenade attack on a pub near Crumlin, Co Antrim.
No one was hurt in the explosion at McKenna's Bar, but its force left a small crater outside the front door and shattered windows. A small number of customers and staff were in the bar when the attack happened at 10.20 p.m. on Wednesday.
The owners of the bar said 11 of the 12 customers in the premises were Protestants.
The two dissident anti-agreement organisations, the Orange Volunteers and the Red Hand Defenders, contacted media organisations in Belfast yesterday issuing verbal statements that their organisations had carried out the attack. The attack is the first bomb attack since the Omagh explosion in August.
The Orange Volunteers said that the attack was "an attempt to assassinate a senior IRA commander from south Antrim who drinks in the bar". The Red Hand Defenders contacted another newsroom to say it carried out grenade attack. The statement concluded: "Attacks will be ongoing - the war is not over."
An RUC spokesperson said yesterday the results of a forensic examination of the scene suggested the grenade used in the attack was a military RGD 5 grenade. A Sinn Fein representative for South Antrim, Mr Martin Meehan, last night urged nationalists living in the Crumlin area to be "vigilant". "It seems that this group, which many see as yet another flag of convenience for the long-established death squads to hide behind, is intent on continuing on its sectarian killing campaign," he said.
The Orange Volunteers organisation emerged late last month when it made a televised claim that it would attack republican prisoners freed under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. The group emerged after the Loyalist Volunteer Force joined the main loyalist paramilitary groups on ceasefire, although the hardline dissidents deny being a breakaway grouping.
Last October the Red Hand Defenders admitted responsibility for the murder of Mr Brian Service, a Catholic man, in Belfast.