The Provisional IRA has been carrying out a systematic round of "punishment" shootings and beatings across nationalist areas of Northern Ireland in recent weeks, according to republican sources.
In the latest attacks, a 20-year-old man was shot in both ankles in west Belfast and in the Bogside of Derry another 20-year-old man was beaten with iron bars and a hammer and some other sharp implement. Both attacks were carried out by masked men who local sources say were from the IRA.
The man in Derry, who was attacked as he worked as a taxi-dispatcher in the Bogside, has a broken leg, a severely fractured leg and needed 40 staples inserted to treat deep lacerations to his head.
The latest attacks bring the total carried out by the IRA in the past three weeks to 10. In some of the attacks, the victims have received permanently disabling injuries.
The youth who was shot in west Belfast was abducted from his home in the Turf Lodge area by two armed and masked men and taken to a house where he was interrogated for around eight hours. He was then taken to an alleyway off Norglen Parade where he was shot in each ankle.
A local republican source said that it was widely believed that the IRA had been directed to carry out at least one "punishment" shooting or beating in working class nationalist areas throughout the North.
The attacks have coincided with the suspension of the assembly in which Sinn Fein held two ministerial positions. During the period of the assembly there were almost no reported "punishment" attacks in republican areas although such attacks continued uninterrupted in loyalist areas.
There have been as many as 80 loyalist attacks since last September.
Since March 10th last, IRA "punishment" attacks have taken place in south Armagh; two in Ardoyne in north Belfast; in Strabane, Co Tyrone; in the Short Strand Catholic enclave in east Belfast; in the Poleglass housing estate in west Belfast; one in the Creggan and now two in the Bogside.
Meanwhile, the splinter republican group, the Official Republican Movement (ORM), has reported three attacks on its members by members of a rival group. The ORM said a lorry and car belonging to friends of one of its leading members in Newry had been burned and death threats made to a family by men terming themselves the "Official IRA".
The threats and arson attacks follow attacks on the ORM in Newry at the end of last year.