The Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) is a Protestant Unionist paramilitary group that has been responsible for a number of sectarian killings in Northern Ireland since 1996.

A splinter group of the larger Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), the LVF broke with its parent organization in 1996, in a dispute related to the Drumcree Protests of that year. For more than 30 years, Northern Ireland's Roman Catholic minority, who wish the province to become part of the Republic of Ireland, and its Protestant majority, who wish it to remain a part of Great Britain, have been in bloody conflict. In late 1994, the major armed paramilitary groups representing both Protestants (also called Loyalists or Unionists) and Catholics (also called Nationalists or Republicans) had declared cease-fires because they wished to participate in peace negotiations. By 1996, negotiations had stalled and remained so.

Protestant frustration and suspicion at ...