Northern Irish police seize weapons cache in Belfast
BELFAST (Reuters) - Police in Northern Ireland have seized a substantial cache of arms which security sources believe are linked to one of the British province's largest loyalist paramilitary groups.
Security sources say the weapons belong to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) which killed more than 540 people during 30 years of conflict with pro-Irish republicans.
But a UVF spokesman denied any connection with the arms.
More than 70 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition were found when officers searched the Belfast home of a man who died at the weekend, police said on Friday.
"A substantial amount of guns and ammunition were discovered as part of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the sudden death of a man in the north of the city," the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said in a statement.
"During a follow-up search of the man's house, more than 70 suspected guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition were discovered. All have been removed for forensic examination."
Media reports said the man had killed himself.
Security sources linked the cache to the UVF, which fought a violent campaign to support British rule of Northern Ireland.
However, a UVF spokesman denied any connection with the arms and said the man in whose home the cache was found was not, and had never been, a group member.
"These guns are categorically not linked to the UVF," he said.
The UVF declared a ceasefire in 2007, prompting the British government to remove it earlier this year from its list of outlawed organizations. The group has so far refused to surrender its weapons.
While Northern Ireland's political foes now share power in a regional assembly, sectarian tensions persist between pro-British Protestants and the minority Catholic population and sporadic violence continues.
Both loyalist groups and armed republican dissidents, who seek a united Ireland, continue to be involved in paramilitary and criminal activities.
More than 3,600 people were killed in three decades of violence up until the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that paved the way for power sharing.
(Reporting by Anne Cadwallader, Writing by Kevin Smith, Editing by Janet Lawrence)
