Two men, one said to have fringe connections with a loyalist paramilitary organisation, are being questioned by the RUC about the murders of the three Quinn children killed in the fire bomb attack on their home on Sunday morning.
The men were arrested yesterday in police raids on two houses in the same estate where the Quinn family lived.
According to police sources it is believed the house was attacked by a number of men who had earlier set up a burning barricade across the main road at the entrance to the Carnany Estate.
The RUC reported that the barricade had been ablaze, blocking the main southern road into Ballymoney up to about 4 a.m. on Sunday.
They believe that a small number of loyalists left the barricade
with the intention of attacking one of the few Catholic-occupied houses in the estate and chose the Quinns' home.
The Quinns and the handful of other Catholic families in the estate had been receiving threats recently but this was not unusual for this time of year.
Five families received envelopes containing bullets and the message "UVF! Get Out" through their letter boxes in the days before the attack.
A Catholic woman with four children who lived near the Quinns and who received one of the threats moved from the estate yesterday.
The RUC yesterday again denied reports, emanating from loyalist sources, that the motive for the murders was anything other than sectarian.
Since Sunday afternoon loyalist sources had been circulating rumours to journalists that the fire bombing was not sectarian but had resulted from some kind of personal grudge against Ms Christine Quinn and her family.
An RUC press officer described these reports as "about the worst misinformation I have experienced".
The same loyalist sources have also been maintaining that one of the people injured by a plastic bullet fired by police at Drumcree was being kept alive on a life support machine until the Drumcree crisis was over.
However, the Eastern Health and Social Services Board yesterday afternoon reported that a man who had been brought to the Royal Victoria Hospital in a critical condition on Friday night had improved and had been moved out of the intensive care unit. His condition was given as "ill and slowly recovering".
Two other men and a woman were treated in hospital for injuries from plastic bullets fired at the loyalists in Drumcree. The woman and one man were still in hospital yesterday but were not said to be seriously ill. The fourth man was released yesterday.
The murders of the three Quinn children, Richard (11), Jason (9) and Mark (10), and bad weather appeared to have had the effect of reducing but not stopping the loyalist violence.
Loyalists all over the North lit their annual pre-Twelfth bonfires on Sunday night. These events are traditionally surrounded by heavy drinking and sectarian violence and police had anticipated serious trouble. It would appear the impact of the news of the children's deaths deterred many loyalists from further sectarian violence.
Overnight on Sunday there was minor rioting in Antrim town where there has been a campaign of attacks on local Catholics. Police fired one plastic bullet at a crowd throwing stones at around 3.40 a.m.
There was also stone-throwing in the Duncairn Gardens area of north Belfast. An attempt was made to burn a public house in Aghohill, Co Antrim and a car sales premises in east Belfast was vandalised.