THERE are fears of further shootings in the INLA feud this weekend after a gun attack in west Belfast yesterday on two men visiting the Royal Victoria Hospital.
The men were fired on as they stood by their car outside the hospital on the Falls Road around 3 p.m. A side window in the vehicle was shattered. Both escaped injury and ran away.
They were visiting a friend who is recovering in hospital after he was shot in the leg on Tuesday.
Both attacks are seen as part of an ongoing INLA feud which has left three people, including a nine year old girl, dead.
One of the two factions involved says it is the INLA and is supported by INLA prisoners in Portlaoise and the H Blocks and by the paramilitary group's political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party. The IRSP condemned yesterday's attack, which it said was carried out by "mavericks".
The other faction, which according to republican sources is made up of disaffected former members, calls itself "INLA GHQ". It comprises people who were expelled from the INLA last year for wanting to call a permanent ceasefire.
In January, according to sources, they are said to have conspired with "criminals" to kill the INLA chief of staff, Gino Gallagher. The INLA responded by killing a leading member of the GHQ group, John Fennell, in Bundoran, Co Donegal a fortnight ago.
Last week, the INLA killed Barbara McAlorum (9) in an attack on a house in north Belfast. She was not the intended target. Her brother Kevin says that he has been questioned by police about the killing of Gino Gallagher and that he has been accused of membership of the GHQ group.
Sinn Fein yesterday demanded that the INLA end the feud. Party councillor, Mr Joe Austin, said: "This feud is a recurrence of the futile and pointless in fighting which has been characteristic of the INLA since its inception. "The best service the INLA could do to the nationalist people would be to end this feuding.
The Workers' Party's Belfast chairman, Mr John Lowry, said that the community wanted the "crazed gunmen to stop.