A pipe bomb was defused today after being found in the back garden of a house in north Belfast.
The bomb, made safe at Alliance Avenue, was the latest incident in the ongoing sectarian violence blighting the area.
Police blamed loyalists for an earlier gun attack on a house in north Belfast in which a Catholic man was injured.
The man was treated in hospital for heavy bruising after a bullet grazed his back when a shot was fired through the kitchen window of his house at Rosapenna Street on the nationalist side of the peaceline at Oldpark Road.
Mr Gerry Kelly, Sinn Féin Assembly member for the area, said it was an entirely random attack and blamed the Ulster Defence Association.
He said: "This was attempted murder. This man is lucky to be alive. People need to ask the question: who is throwing the blast bombs and firing guns? It is the UDA."This attempt to say it is tit-for-tat violence is absolute rubbish."
The 31-year-old man was sitting in the kitchen of his house with four other adults just after midnight when a shot was fired at them.
The bullet struck the wooden window frame before grazing the man.
Three children aged seven, 10 and 15 were upstairs asleep at the time of the shooting but were unhurt.
It is believed the attacker had climbed the wall that divides the two communities.
Mr Kelly added: "They just picked on the house with a light on in the kitchen. These houses have been attacked with pipe bombs on a number of occasions before."
Earlier, 100 residents blocked Oldpark Road for an hour in protest against attacks on residents. They claimed their homes were being targeted night after night.
Elsewhere in north Belfast, attempts to resolve a dispute which has led to a blockade on a Catholic girls' primary school have so far failed.
Pupils attending Holy Cross in the Ardoyne today were again stopped by loyalists from taking their normal route to and from school and had to slip in and out of a back entrance.
Meanwhile in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, another school and six houses were evacuated because of a bomb alert.
In Portadown, Co Armagh, scene of the annual July stand-off at Drumcree Church, tensions remained after violence flared last night.
The RUC fired one plastic bullet and made an arrest as trouble broke out on the Corcrain Road. A burning barricade blocked the road, while stones and petrol bombs were aimed at police officers.
PA