An SDLP councillor is calling for funding to help protect a Newtownabbey cemetery which was vandalised at the weekend.

More than 20 memorials were damaged in the attack at Carnmoney Cemetery, on the outskirts of Belfast.

It is the second attack on the graveyard in the last fortnight. There was also an attack in May on the grave of a man murdered by loyalists earlier in the year.

The resting place of the dead has always been regarded by people as something sacred

Fr Dan White

Newtownabbey councillor Noreen McLelland wants a meeting between the council, the police and the Stormont security minister Jane Kennedy.

She said funding must be found to step up security.

In the latest attack, memorial crosses on some graves were smashed and headstones were overturned.

It is thought all of the graves targeted belonged to Catholic families.

'No humanity

Father Dan White, who is parish priest for the area, said it was the worst attack of its kind he had seen.

"The resting place of the dead has always been regarded by people as something sacred.

When we don't recongise that and don't live by that, we have lost our humanity. I think it is terrible what has happened here," he said.

The cemetery is beside Rathcoole estate, a loyalist housing area where Catholic postman Daniel McColgan, 20, was murdered by the Ulster Defence Association as he arrived for work in January 2002.

In May, his grave in Carnmoney was damaged in a similar attack.