A Derry RUC officer said yesterday republican paramilitary gangs were trying to enforce "mob rule" on parts of the North. Supt Johnny O'Carroll was speaking hours after a masked gang had hammered a 56-year-old man with clubs in his home in the Rosemount area of Derry.
It was the fifth such attack in the city in the last four weeks, and followed a gun attack last Friday night by an armed and masked gang who fired six bullets into the legs of a 38-year-old man in his Creggan home. Three days earlier they fired two shots over his wife's head in a bungled assault.