LOYALIST DRUG GANGS BLAMED FOR VAN BOMB OUTRAGE

Loyalist paramilitary drug dealers have been blamed for a bomb attack which left a man badly injured in the north yesterday.

Sandy Rice fell from his van bleeding heavily with serious leg wounds when a device exploded under the seat as he drove through the seaside town of Bangor, Co Down.

Two other men who were with him escaped the blast, just hours after a bomb wrecked Shankill Road offices shared by the Ulster Democratic Party, the political wing of the Ulster Defence Association, as part of the escalating loyalist feud in Belfast.

Component parts for pipe bombs, the tail fin of a mortar bomb, balaclavas and combat clothing were later found in the debris, police revealed.

But it is not thought the Bangor blast is linked to fighting between the UDA and Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) which has left three men dead and scores of families having to flee their homes.

Mr Rice was head of security at a nightclub in Bangor, and had been threatened by drugs dealers linked to the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), according to David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

The LVF, a splinter group heavily involved in drugs trafficking, is backing the UDA in the feud, and even though this attack is not being linked to the fighting, it is bound to heighten the tensions between the rival factions.

Mr Ervine, a close friend of Mr Rice, a former loyalist internee who spent nearly 20 years living near London before returning home to set up an electrical business and run a boxing club, said: ``This man was under serious threat of losing his life because of his stand against the drugs dealers. He has evicted these people and this is the price paid. It has nothing to do with the Shankill.''

Working

The men had been working in a cafe, close to the rear of a seafront hotel where the blue Transit van had been parked. They had just turned a corner into High Street when the blast happened.

Bob Milliken and his wife Brenda were standing just yards away at the time.

Mrs Milliken said: ``The driver seemed to fall out of the van. He was badly injured, but the other two looked to be okay. People in the crowd gave him first aid until the ambulance arrived.''

Mr Milliken added: ``There was this loud bang and suddenly a big cloud of smoke.'' Hours earlier, an explosion destroyed a building in the Shankill Road used by the Prisoners Aid and Post-Conflict Resettlement Group, and where the UDP also has offices.

Nobody was hurt in the attack thought to have been carried out by the UVF.

UDP leader John White claimed the UVF leadership had lost control of its members.

Control

He said: ``The only way this will come to an end is for the UVF leadership to take control of their organisation and control the thugs and bully boys who are running about intimidating women and children, burning people out of their homes, and blowing buildings up.''

The same building attacked overnight was targeted by gunmen soon after the UVF shot dead two men in the nearby Crumlin Road early last month.

That attack provoked an immediate response with the burning of the Progressive Unionist party office a couple of hundred yards down the road.