The Independent Monitoring Commission has said that nearly 150 people have been warned their lives may be under threat from feuding loyalist paramilitaries.
In a new report published today, the IMC says the Ulster Volunteer Force's feud with the Loyalist Volunteer Force involved the worst violence it has ever investigated.
The IMC dossier accuses the UVF of trying to wipe out the smaller organisation and claimed its political representatives in the Progressive Unionist Party had lost any control over it.
The IMC believes the PUP should continue to face financial punishment through loss of earnings from the suspended Stormont Assembly.
The IMC report says that since last July the UVF has assassinated four men it believed were associated with the LVF. The report also says that the UVF carried out dozens of other attacks, including 15 attempted murders, and 18 explosive or petrol bomb incidents.
The IMC says the LVF was responsible for 11 attacks, but concludes its violence was mainly in response to the aggression of the UVF.
The report says the commission does not believe the murders of Lisa Dorrian in Co Down last February and 15-year-old schoolboy Thomas Devlin in north Belfast last month were carried out on behalf of any organisation.
