Two pipe-bombs have been made safe by British army disposal experts after they had been pushed through the letterboxes of Catholic homes in Randalstown, Co Antrim, early yesterday. The RUC has confirmed that it is investigating a sectarian motive.
At 2.30 a.m. yesterday, the occupier of a house at Tresna Park in the town found a 12-inch-long piping device containing a firework sticking through his letter-box.
Mr Gerard Redmond, who discovered a similar device in his letter-box, said he could not understand why his family had been targeted. "We have lived in this area for years and we have never had any trouble with our Protestant neighbours," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
Reacting to the attack, the SDLP Assembly member for South Antrim, Mr Donovan McClelland, called on the RUC to reveal who was responsible for the growing number of apparently sectarian incidents in the area.
"These attacks are the latest incidents in a terror campaign against the nationalist community in South Antrim over the past year," Mr McClelland said. Mr Martin Meehan, a Sinn Fein representative for South Antrim, described the pipebomb attacks as an "attempt to intimidate nationalists out of the area".