The funeral of the leading loyalist paramilitary Ihab Shoukri in Belfast has been disrupted by a series of bomb alerts.
34-year-old Mr Shoukri died last weekend after a suspected drugs overdose, his funeral service was to be held in the Church of Ireland on the Ballysillan Road in Belfast.
His brother Andre, a former senior loyalist, was freed from prison for eight hours to allow him to attend the funeral.
Mourners were forced to wait outside the church while British army bomb experts carried out a controlled explosion on a suspicious object found in the church grounds.
The funeral finally went ahead when the cortege entered the church by a different gate.
Earlier the area around the Shoukri home in the Rathcoole housing estate had also been sealed off because of another bomb scare.
