Man shot dead in new wave of loyalist violence

Loyalists are suspected of murdering a man whose five-year-old son was asked to send him to the front door of their home.

Mark Apsley, 38, a Protestant, died in a hail of bullets when a lone gunman called at his house in Dickson Park in the village of Ballygowan on Saturday evening. Police said they were trying to establish a motive for the killing but said they did not believe it was sectarian. They were understood to be investigating claims that the killing was linked to a personal dispute between Mr Apsley and an east Belfast Ulster Defence Association boss.

Mr Apsley, who had two children, had only moved into the house on an estate in Ballygowan a month ago. The victim's son answered a knock at the front door to a man who asked him to get his daddy, said police. As Mr Apsley arrived at the door the gunman fired five or six shots, killing him instantly. The boy had returned to his mother and 18-month-old sister in the living room and did not witness the killing.

Jack Beattie, a local Democratic Unionist Party councillor, said: "The sooner we rid Ulster of paramilitaries the sooner we will have peace."

Loyalists were also being blamed for a gun and petrol bomb attack on a house in north Belfast early yesterday.

One of two petrol bombs set on fire a car and caravan outside the house and there were reports of shots being fired as the attackers sped off in a car. Sam Duddy, chairman of the Ulster Political Research Group, blamed loyalists from the Shankill Road area of west Belfast for the attack. He said the family in the house were the victims of "continual harassment" and had only moved to the house two weeks ago after being forced to flee another home nearer the Shankill.

In another incident, an 18-year-old man was shot in both legs in a paramilitary-style attack in the Shankill Road area. Police said three masked men smashed their way into his house, shot him in both thighs and battered him with an iron bar, breaking at least one limb.

In Co Armagh, police were investigating a gun attack on a house in the village of Lawrencetown during which shots were fired through the living room and bedroom windows of a bungalow. Four people sleeping in the house at the time of the early-morning attack escaped injury.