The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has called on dissident republicans who are being blamed for a bomb attack on a Co Tyrone RUC station in the early hours of yesterday to cease their activities.
Reacting to the attack, Mr Adams said the dissidents were out of touch with the views of the republican community. "What they are doing has no part to play and is out of step with republican views and the main feeling of republican people at this time," he added.
Mr Adams urged groups such as the "Real IRA" to become a part of the peace process rather than attempt to destroy it. "There's a chance of building peace and these people need to be part of that."
Nobody was hurt and little damage was caused when a small bomb contained in a holdall and left at a pedestrian entrance to Sion Mills RUC station exploded shortly after 3 a.m. The station was unmanned at the time.
Around 50 families, some elderly and disabled, had to be evacuated from their homes after police received a number of bomb warnings at around 1.30 a.m. The evacuation was continuing and British army technical officers had yet to start defusing the device when it exploded. Police said it contained around 10 pounds of explosives.
The RUC district commander, Supt Clifford Best, described the attack as "totally reckless and indiscriminate".
"We are all trying to work in partnership with the community for the betterment of the community but yet we have these dissidents who are still deeply rooted in the past and will not come from that," he added.
Sinn Fein's Westminster candidate and MLA for West Tyrone, Mr Pat Doherty, said those responsible for the attack operated "without either support or mandate".
"The people who carried out this attack are opposed to the peace process and to the Good Friday agreement. They have little or no support and operate without either a mandate or indeed a strategy to achieve political change.
"It is incumbent on all of us in political leadership to make it clear that politics can work and that politics can deliver change," he concluded.
The Ulster Unionist MP for the constituency, Mr William Thompson, condemned the attack, saying it was a "miracle that no one was killed or injured in this indiscriminate assault".
The SDLP's West Tyrone candidate, Ms Brid Rodgers, said dissident republicans were obviously unhappy about the good community relations in the Co Tyrone town.
"The town of Sion Mills is an example of good community relations in the North. Some people clearly cannot deal with the idea that the community has moved on and want to drag us back to the past."
The attack was the second in Co Tyrone in less than a week after a failed grenade attack on Strabane RUC station last Saturday.
Several days earlier a device had been left in a holdall outside an army base near Derry courthouse. It also failed to explode.
Security sources believe the attacks are part of an intensified campaign by dissident republicans in the run-up to the Westminster and local government elections.