POLICE ARE treating as “attempted murder” the shooting of a 25-year-old man in north Belfast on Thursday night.
The man, who was seriously injured, was last night reported to be in a stable condition in hospital.
The victim was sitting in a car with two friends in Brookfield Place in Ardoyne at about 9.30pm when he was confronted by up to four masked men.
They fired several shots, hitting the man three times – in both legs and, most seriously, in the abdomen.
Detectives said they did not have a motive for the shooting. Local people said they could not understand why the victim was attacked.
One of his friends suffered a slight wound to his leg, while the other man was uninjured.
Sinn Féin junior minister Gerry Kelly said the victim had his gall bladder removed in hospital as a result of his injuries. He said he believed that the gang’s aim was to kill.
Mr Kelly, an Assembly member for North Belfast, urged anyone with information about the attack to bring it forward.
“I want to condemn this incident outright. Those responsible for this attack are not representative of this community in any way; they have no support and they offer our people nothing but further distress in the time ahead,” he added.
Local SDLP MLA Alban Maginness also appealed for anyone with information to contact the police. He too believed the intention was to cause death or very serious injury, because the victim was shot in the stomach.
“The people of Ardoyne were at the sharp end of the Troubles for decades, and they suffered greatly,” he said.
“We have many difficult problems to deal with in the area, but the one thing we can be absolutely sure of is that those who carry out these shootings have no solutions to offer,” he added.
“They don’t want solutions, they want to keep communities in turmoil so they can exercise control. They can only harm the community and they must be isolated in the community,” Mr Maginness added.
“They must realise that they will face our police and our courts and end up spending long periods in our jails.
“And when they are eventually released, they will have to come back into a much better and happier community which has long forgotten them and only has contempt for what they stood for and what they did to those they would probably claim are their own people,” he said.
Local Alliance representatives Gerry Lynch and Billy Webb said the shooting was “despicable” and also called for information to be supplied to the PSNI.
