Two teenagers, aged 15 and 17, have had to receive hospital treatment after being shot and badly beaten in the predominantly loyalist Shankill area of west Belfast on Wednesday evening. One youth was shot in both legs and the other in one leg. They also suffered severe bruising to their faces and bodies after they were attacked by several men in the Ohio Street area.
The director of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau, Mr Vincent McKenna, condemned the attack, saying that the two governments had abandoned working-class people to arbitrary acts of paramilitary violence.
Police are also investigating what they describe as a vicious assault on a 21-year-old woman in north Belfast in the early hours of Easter Monday. The woman was pushed to the ground, punched and kicked and had her face slashed with a jagged beer can by a group of other women in the Ardoyne area. She needed 25 stitches to facial injuries.
A man in his 30s suffered lacerations and bruising when he was assaulted by men in Downpatrick, Co Down, on Wednesday night. Police have not yet established a motive.