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Thursday, March 28, 2024

LOYALIST BID TO ‘CLEANSE’ DERRY’S WATERSIDE

Posted by Jim on August 26, 2017

Five Catholic and mixed families have been forced out of their homes in
Derry amid a pogrom by loyalist paramilitaries in the predominately
Protestant Waterside area of the city.

In one incident, shots were fired into the home of a young Catholic
mother on Saturday night. Her one-year-old daughter was asleep upstairs
when two shots were fired through the living room window.

The woman’s boyfriend, who is also Catholic, said the bullets narrowly
missed him and a friend as they sat watching television. He said his
girlfriend had been “warned” warned about bringing Catholics into the
area after moving there six months ago.

One neighbour said that the gunmen could have easily killed the baby
girl.

“The people who did this fired two shots in the window and could have
killed this child as she lay sleeping,” she said. “It would be very
traumatic for that mother and that baby to have come through this and
some of the neighbours are completely traumatised by this attack.”

Sinn Fein councillor Christopher Jackson said there had beren a clear
attempt to kill.

“I want to get the message out that the vast majority of people in the
Waterside are disgusted by this and there’s a lot of good work going on
to bring the communities together,” he said. “But we need people to step
up to the mark so that these thugs have no hiding place.”

He has already helped to rehouse four Catholic and mixed religion
families since August 11, when a Catholic man and his Protestant wife
and children fled their home after they were given 24 hours to leave.

A further attack took place on Monday, when a pipe bomb was thrown at
the home of a Catholic man living in the Clooney estate. The elderly
man, Andy Logue (62), has been forced to take temporary shelter in a
community centre.

The victim, who is originally from County Donegal, said he reported a
broken window but was then told he had been the target of a failed bomb
attack. He believed those behind the attack intended throwing the device
into his home but it dropped short.

He said: “I was in having a cup of tea with my neighbours and the next
thing the police said you better get up against that wall there because
we found a device. And we’re up here (Lincoln Courts community centre)
since.”

The Irish Republican Socialist Party in Derry City said such attacks
were “nothing new” to the Waterside. Derry City IRSP spokesperson
Danny Morrison said: “These attacks are carried out by mainstream
loyalist elements in either the UDA and UVF, they have become
predictable and normal practice.

“Gun and bomb attacks carried out with impunity, under the cover of
darkness, terrorising families and pushing a sectarian, right-wing and
racist agenda.”

“Going back to 2014, and long before that, there was racist pipe bomb
attacks on Romanian families, racist graffiti, sectarian gun and pipe
bomb attacks all done to ethnically cleanse PUL [loyalist] areas.

Mr Morrison concluded: “The IRSP are calling on those responsible for
these sectarian and racist attacks to immediately cease their
activities before someone gets killed.”

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