JIM CUSACK

AT LEAST 26 people have been murdered in the gang wars that have erupted among feuding drug barons in the last few years.

The killing spree is now the subject of a six-part crimeseries on RTE which starts tomorrow night.

The company behind Eddie Hobbs's Rip Off Republic, Independent Pictures, will examine the dramatic drug-fuelled battles which have raged through the inner city communities, mainly in Dublin and Limerick.

But one of the worst feuds is a conflict started among Traveller families in the midlands several years ago. It has now spread across the country.

The first programme deals with the break-up of the notorious 'Westies', the Blanchardstown-based gang led by killers Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg who were assassinated while on the run in Spain in January 2004 by rival drug dealers they had crossed on the Costa del Sol. Both men's bodies were buried secretly under the concrete floor of a small shed in Catal, a sun-soaked down near Alicante in southern Spain.

The bodies were recovered in July 2006 but are still being held by the Spanish authorities as investigations continue. Before their bodies were discovered, three other gang members were murdered in the infighting which followed their disappearance.

The biggest and worst gang feud to break out in Dublin in the past seven years is examined in the second programme. This concerns the break-up of a young gang based in Drimnagh in 2000 which started a feud that has so far claimed 10 lives. The feud came to a head in November 2005 when Darren Geoghegan, 26, and Gavin Byrne, 30, were set up by their own side and assassinated in a Lexus car in Knocklyon in November 2005.

Days later a rival gang member, Noel Roche, 27, was shot dead as his car pulled up at traffic lights in Contarf. Further killings followed with the murder of Wayne Zambra in Cork Street last August, and the murder of Gary Bryan, 31, a month later.

In Limerick, the McCarty/Dundon-Keane/Ryan feud has so far claimed eight lives and has involved dozens of attempted murders. The third programme in the series examines the background to the feud and follows it up to the murder of Noel Campion, 35, who was shot dead in broad daylight near the centre of Limerick in April.

Also examined is one of the many Traveller feuds - a bloody dispute between members of the Joyce, McGinley and Nevin families that has its origins in a years-old dispute over insults exchanged between members of the McGinleys and Joyces. There have been no killings, though there have been many attempted murders, shootings, slashings and beatings.

In March, the dispute sparked a gun battle in a Dundalk cemetery following the burial of a relative of the Nevin family.

The series will also feature the murder of Finglas gangster, Martin 'Marlo' Hyland, shot dead by a professional assassin at his home in December last year. The gunman also shot dead 20-year-old plumber, Anthony Campbell, who was carrying out work in Hyland's kitchen. Since the programme was made, it has emerged that Hyland was working closely with IRA members from north-west Dublin, including two men associated with Sinn Fein, who were attempting to launder €500,000 in counterfeit notes on a property deal in Bulgaria. Gardai suspect a falling-out on this deal could have been behind Hyland's murder.

The last programme in the series concerns the bloody inner-city feud which erupted after it emerged that IRA man and paedophile, Christy Griffin, had been raping his partner's young daughter since she was nine years of age.

IRA associates of Griffin, who is serving life imprisonment for the repeated rape and sexual abuse, and members of an extended family in the area have been engaged in a series of attacks that have so far claimed three lives.

In one of the last incidents, last month, a hand-grenade was thrown at an apartment in the north inner city in which eight men were watching soccer on TV. The grenade exploded on the balcony - but if it had gone through the window there would have been multiple deaths.

Grenades, including one used in a previous attack in Swords, were brought into Dublin by the former IRA 'officer commanding' in Dublin, a close associate of Griffin. Gardai searched his house last February following a tip-off.