The RUC last night described as "very substantial" a seizure of "deadly" items, believed to be component parts for pipebombs. They were seized in searches of flats in north Belfast. Army technical experts were called to Ross House in the loyalist Mount Vernon area to examine the parts. Yesterday Catholic and Protestant clergy in the North condemned the latest violent attacks during which two Catholic homes were targeted by loyalist pipe-bombers.
In the most recent attack, a device was thrown at the rear of a house on Alliance Avenue in north Belfast.
The Catholic owner of the house was upstairs with two friends when the bomb exploded at around 1.30 a.m. Windows at the rear of the house were damaged.
A Catholic couple and their two nieces also narrowly escaped injury when a device exploded in their Derry home early on Saturday.
The device was thrown through the kitchen window of their house in the predominately Protestant Waterside area of the city.
The home of a Protestant woman in the loyalist Belvoir estate in south Belfast was attacked at around midnight on Saturday when two shots were fired at the front door of her flat on Castlerobin Road.
The Church of Ireland Bishop of Down and Dromore, the Right Rev Harold Miller, yesterday warned the ongoing violence could undermine the peace process.
"Obviously when there are pipe-bomb attacks going on it makes it more likely that there would be retaliation from republican paramilitaries," he said.
The Catholic Bishop of Derry, Dr Seamus Hegarty, said the increase in pipe-bombings could harm community relations in mixed areas.
"It generates and creates a certain element of suspicion in an area where in the past the relationship has been very tenuous," he said. Meanwhile, the RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said he believed the "net was closing" around some of those responsible for up to 50 pipe-bombings that have occurred since the beginning of the year.
"We have upped the levels of patrolling, we have made appeals for public support, we have made many seizures of these devices, and we are increasing our covert activity as well," he said.
He said most of the incidents involved people who had been members of the UDA. However, he said that did not necessarily mean that the organisation was breaching its ceasefire.