About 100 people were evacuated from their homes in Derry early yesterday after a pipe-bomb was left on a pavement in the Abercorn Road area of the city. The device, of home-made explosives, was made safe in a controlled explosion by the British army.
During the five-hour operation families who were evacuated stayed in a nearby Salvation Army hall and local community hall.
The alert began at 3.20 a.m. when a man reported a suspicious object lying on a footpath between Abercorn Road and the loyalist Fountain Estate.
Tensions have been running high in the area between the Fountain and the Bogside in recent weeks following a series of sectarian clashes which have included six separate petrol-bomb attacks on homes in the Fountain.