The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, has called for an end to punishment attacks. Two men were shot and one badly beaten in nationalist areas in recent days. Loyalist paramilitaries carried out one shooting.
Speaking at Stormont yesterday, Mr McLaughlin said his party was opposed to such attacks. He said there were more humane ways to resolve issues. The IRA is understood to have been involved in the shooting of a 20-year-old man in Strabane, Co Tyrone, on Sunday night. He was dragged from a house in the nationalist Iona Villas area of the town by several masked men and shot once in the left leg. Yesterday, a man was dragged from his car at gunpoint in the Creggan area of Derry. He was beaten with pickaxe handles by a group of masked men. After the assault, the men threw what is believed to have been a petrol bomb into the victim's car, setting it alight.
On Friday, a 30-year-old man was found lying in the car-park of a public house in the nationalist Ardoyne area of north Belfast. He had gunshot wounds to both legs. Republican sources said the IRA was involved. It was the first such shooting in a republican area for more than four months. There had been an end to IRA punishment shootings during the final weeks of the Mitchell Review and the setting up of the North's executive. Loyalist shootings, however, had continued during this period.
On Sunday, a man was shot in the legs in the loyalist Tiger's Bay area of north Belfast. Loyalist paramilitaries are understood to have been responsible.
Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, the UVF's political wing, said the North's politicians had to share the blame for such attacks because they had created the political stalemate.
"We have a collective responsibility in terms of looking for a vision for the future for our society and at the same time looking at the poor souls who end up having their knees blown apart because of some infraction, or perceived infraction. We have to do something about all of that," he said.
The RUC said that since September, there had been 77 beatings by loyalists and 13 by republicans. Loyalists had carried out 23 punishment shootings and republicans were responsible for five, a police spokesman added.