Gunmen Open Fire In Catholic Pub

Masked gunmen fired on New Year’s Eve revelers in a Catholic pub Wednesday, wounding five customers, one critically.

The Clifton Tavern on the Cliftonville Road was filling with New Year’s Eve revelers when the attackers entered, firing at random. Initial police reports said one gunman was involved but witnesses, including local city council member Danny Lavery, said that there were two.

“It’s easy pickings on New Year’s Eve. Every social venue in Catholic areas is packed with people,” said Lavery, a member of Sinn Fein, the party allied to the Irish Republican Army.

Five people were reported admitted to Belfast hospitals, and at least one was said to be in serious condition.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

However, an outlawed pro-British paramilitary group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, had vowed to strike Catholic areas in retaliation for Saturday’s killing of its founder and leader, Billy “King Rat” Wright.

Members of an IRA splinter group, the Irish National Liberation Army, shot Wright five times in the back inside Northern Ireland’s top-security Maze prison.

Wright’s comrades almost immediately retaliated, shooting dead a security guard and wounding three other Catholics, among them a 14-year-old boy, outside a crowded rural hotel.

North Belfast is the most common killing ground in Northern Ireland - about a sixth of all 3,200 victims of the conflict since 1969 have been slain here.