Loyalists are being blamed for a sectarian attack on the home of a Catholic family in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, writes Clare Murphy, in Belfast. A woman and her four young children escaped without injury when a pipe bomb was thrown through the kitchen window of their home at 1 a.m. yesterday.
Ms Mary Quinn was asleep in the living-room of the house in Beachvalley in the town when the attack occurred. Her children were asleep in the upstairs bedrooms of the home, where the family have lived for 13 years.
Five neighbouring families were also evacuated while an army bomb disposal unit carried out a controlled explosion on the device. A 69-year-old woman recovering from a stroke was brought to a local hospital while the device was made safe.
RUC Supt Duncan McCausland said he suspected a dissident loyalist group was behind the attack. He described those involved as "criminals without any care for what they are doing".
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, yesterday expressed his concern at the recent spate of "vicious" at tacks on family homes in the North and called on those responsible for the attack in Dungannon to be brought to justice.
"It is no thanks to those who carried out this attack that those in the house escaped in- jury," he said.
A local SDLP councillor, Mr Vincent Curry, said the attack was carried out by a "mindless bunch of sectarian thugs who saw the opportunity of an easy target". Mr Francie Molloy, a Sinn Fein Assembly member for mid-Ulster, accused those who threw the bomb of attempting to "wipe out an entire family". He said sectarian tension was being encouraged by anti-agreement unionists.
"Into this unstable situation step loyalists with pipe and petrol bombs and, as usual, innocent and vulnerable Catholics have to pay the price."