UDA announces ceasefire

Northern Ireland's largest Protestant guerrilla organisation, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has announced a 12-month cessation of all paramilitary activities.

British security sources say the outlawed group is heavily involved in drug dealing and racketeering, and have blamed it for the killing of a number of Catholics.

The UDA declared a ceasefire in 1994 in response to the Irish Republican Army's truce a few months earlier. But in 2001, Britain ruled the ceasefire had broken down after blaming the UDA for pipe bomb attacks on Catholic homes.