Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
4 arrested in INLA probe
Flats resident lives in fear after fire & stabbing
FOUR men were arrested yesterday as part of an operation into criminal activities of the INLA.
They were taken into custody after officers from the Paramilitary Crime Task Force carried out searches at six properties in North and West Belfast.
A firearm and suspected Class A Drugs were seized at the scene. A TERRIFIED resident has warned “someone is going to get killed” after a suspected arson following anti-social behaviour.
The man has already moved his young children out of the flats complex on Flax Street, North Belfast, following a stabbing.
He still lives in the building and described how he “could have burned to death” in a suspected arson attack. He said: “Someone is going to get killed here. The fire is just the most recent incident.
“This is a week when young kids in the building had to, literally, jump over pools of blood on the ground floor after a man was stabbed. My kids are away for their own safety.
“And I’m not the only one. All of us living here are sick of it. Sick of complaining, sick of paying money to live in a place where, any day now, someone will be killed here.
“Nothing is being done, or has been done, about the situation here, for the best part of a year. It has to stop.”
The resident has four children, the youngest just a few months old, and a teenage son who is “afraid to come near the building” due to the trouble in the area. Early on Saturday morning, five PSNI officers were hospitalised after a suspected arson.
Det Sgt Stephen Gardiner said: “Officers responded to the blaze at a block of flats in Flax Street at around 5.40am, Saturday 29 September.”
But the man said he and another family were not evacuated by emergency services and “could have been killed”.