A woman whose family escaped injury in a pipe bomb blast at their home in the North today condemned those behind the attack.
Ms Catherine Swindell, her partner and three children were asleep in their Snugville Street house in the loyalist Shankill area of west Belfast when they heard a bang downstairs. A small pipe bomb device pushed through the letter box had exploded, shattering the front door and hall area.
Ms Swindell, who had just returned with her family from holiday, was left shocked and bemused by the attack which could have injured her children - the youngest aged just four months.
"There's no call for it, they've no consideration for the kids," she said.
"If that's what your own does on you I don't know how I could explain it to them because they are all kids.
"I don't know what to say to them, I really don't. They are going to ask what for and I haven't even got a reason to tell them what for."
Also in Belfast, six shots were fired at the front of a house at Ballysillan Avenue in the north of the city where a married couple were sitting. One went through the living room window of the house.
No one was injured.
PA