Prison Officers in Northern Ireland are today threatening to take strike action after a series of attacks on staff inside the high-security Magilligan Jail.
Leaders of the Prison Officers' Association (POA) are meeting Prison Service management to express their frustrations.
For months, prison officers have come under attack in their homes from loyalist paramilitaries as part of a campaign to achieve segregation from republicans.
The Prison Service has now granted the segregation to inmates after also being faced with a series of violent clashes in the Co Antrim jail and a dissident republican "dirty protest".
The prison is now being prepared for the segregation and, according to the POA, ordinary non-paramilitary inmates are having their regime restricted to enable the work to be done - and attacking warders in frustration.
Two officers were injured yesterday in attacks and three more the day before.
Mr Finlay Spratt, chairman of the POA, said: "We are being attacked in our homes and now we are being attacked in the prison.
"Staff are becoming totally frustrated. They are being assaulted on the job because of the lack of resources and they haven't got adequate security measures at their homes.
But Prison Service director general Peter Russell said that strike action was not the way to address the problems in the jail.
PA