SECTARIAN tensions in Ballymena, Co Antrim, have been heightened by arson attacks on two Catholic homes and a Catholic school early yesterday. Political leaders have appealed for calm after the violence.
The RUC has set up a special team of detectives to investigate the incidents.
The attacks are believed to have been part of a co ordinated night of violence to heighten tensions before the weekly picket tomorrow night outside St Mary's Catholic Church in Harryville, a suburb of Ballymena. Loyalists have been mounting a picket outside the church for the past 12 weeks in protest at the rerouting of an Orange march in Dunloy.
St Mary's primary school, which was targeted by the arsonists, had just been refurbished after another malicious fire in September. The school was closed yesterday for clearing up work.
There were also petrol bomb attacks on two houses in the Ballykeel estate. A couple and their two children, aged six and four, had a narrow escape when a petrol bomb was thrown through the living room window of their home in Orkney Drive. Later, another incendiary device was thrown through the downstairs window of a house at Staffa Drive in the estate but failed to ignite.
The Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh, visited Ballymena yesterday to survey the damage.
The priests of St Mary's Church described the attacks as "a manifestation of evil". In a statement yesterday, they condemned violence against their parishioners: "When people gather for worship their right to be there is deeply sacred and demanding of respect.
"To subject families, children and the elderly to abuse as they gather and, even more, to disrupt and intrude on any act of worship, not only denies a basic human right but, in a sense, does violence to the rights of God."
A local Church of Ireland minister, the Rev Stuart Lloyd, visited St Mary's Church yesterday. He said he was there because it was important to show support for the Catholic community in Ballymena.
The INLA's political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, said that loyalist paramilitaries were "up to their armpits in this campaign of sectarian genocide".