A Catholic businessman narrowly escaped death after kicking away a pipe-bomb that was left under his car outside his home in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, yesterday.
In a call to a local newspaper yesterday afternoon, a man claiming to represent the loyalist paramilitary group, the Red Hand Defenders, admitted responsibility for the attack.
The man discovered the device yesterday morning as his children were leaving for school. He grew suspicious and kicked it into a hedge.
British army bomb disposal experts were then called in and carried out a controlled explosion.
Supt Duncan McCausland of the RUC said the pipe-bomb would have been capable of causing death or serious injury.
He described the attack as sectarian, carried out by people bent on "driving a wedge between the communities and preventing a peaceful future for everybody".
Supt McCausland warned the public never to kick any suspicious-looking objects. He appealed to anybody who was in the area between 9.30 p.m. on Tuesday and 8.30 a.m. yesterday to contact police in Dungannon.
Meanwhile, army disposal experts made safe a pipe-bomb-type device in the Greencastle area of north Belfast yesterday afternoon after a local newsroom received a bomb warning from the Red Hand Defenders.