 and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the Belfast Telegraph reported, as well as mainstream unionists. The UVF and UDA are reviewing their 1994 ceasefires amid heightened tensions over the Irish Sea border treaty, which is meant to safeguard the Good Friday Agreement. 'Everyone is a hawk now' Loyalist leaders met in the Co Antrim area last week, according to the newspaper, which reported that people present were 'angry and militant'. A source at the meeting said: 'There were no hawks and doves, everyone is a hawk now.' In June, the UVF carried out an elaborate bomb hoax to disrupt a speech by Simon Coveney, Ireland's foreign minister, in Belfast. The Loyalist Communities Council wrote to all unionist parties last week demanding that no Irish government officials visit Northern Ireland while the Protocol remains in place. The DUP walked out of Stormont in February. It refused to drop its boycott after the May elections, which it lost for the first time to Sinn Fein. Northern Ireland now faces a second election in less than a year in December after a six-month deadline to reform the executive passed on Friday){kind=link}
Paramilitary groups were hours away from attack on an Irish government target in power-sharing protest when it was called off, reports say
Northern Irish loyalists called off a planned terrorist attack in the Republic of Ireland at the last minute amid heightened tensions over post-Brexit trading arrangements.
Paramilitary groups were just hours from carrying out the plot on an Irish government target before they were stood down by their commanders, it was reported on Monday.
The attack was cancelled after the UK ruled out Northern Ireland being jointly administered by London and Dublin if Stormont could not be restored.
The DUP has refused to return to power-sharing until the Northern Ireland Protocol, which created the Irish Sea border, is removed or replaced.