RUC officers in Northern Ireland came within a split second of death when a bomb was hurled at their patrol car, it was revealed tonight.
The explosion in Cookstown, Co Tyrone, was thought to have been caused by a coffee jar bomb.
An Army bomb team and police experts spent the day examining the scene of the blast and collecting fragments of the bomb following the attack late last night.
The officers managed to drive their damaged car back to base, they were uninjured but suffered deep shock.
RUC Superintendent Victor Hutchinson said the men were lucky to be alive after the device missed their car by a whisker.
He said: "The device exploded at the rear of the car, but if it had been thrown a fraction of a second earlier and gone underneath the car, the consequences would have been much, much worse.
"There is no doubt that these people intended to murder my officers."
Mr Hutchinson said the bombers not only endangered his men but large crowds of young people arriving at local night spots.
The security forces believe dissident republicans, linked to the Real IRA who bombed Omagh and killed 29 people, were responsible.
Another security alert continued outside Armagh where Army bomb disposal experts were called in to examine two bins with wires attached.
The suspect bomb, at the Brootally Crossroads in the Monaghan Road, was spotted on Saturday. Local Ulster Unionist Assembly member Mr Danny Kennedy said he suspected it was the work of republican dissidents and said it showed the security threat was still too high to consider any further demilitarisation measures either in Armagh city or South Armagh.
The incidents were being investigated as Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson held talks with the RUC Chief Constable during which they focused on the growing level of sectarian attacks on families in Larne, Co Antrim.
The discussions were organised in the wake of two more pipe bomb attacks on Catholic families at the end of last week, and as a Catholic church leader called on politicians to unite to condemn the violence.
The RUC revealed that there had been 76 sectarian incidents reported in the seaside town last year involving 88 victims - 55 Catholic and 33 Protestant.
It said that of 25 people either charged or reported for prosecution 23 had been Protestant and two Catholic.
PA