Police in the North are investigating an arson attack on a house in Ballymena, Co Antrim that they believe was sectarian.
The fire at the home of a Protestant family in the mainly Catholic Dunclug estate in Co Antrim was reported at 9.15pm yesterday evening.
The occupants were not in the house, which was extensively damaged. A relative said the family’s windows had been broken regularly in the past.
Meanwhile, a petrol bomb was thrown at an Orange hall in Main Street in Rasharkin, Co Antrim, yesterday evening. It failed to ignite. A 38-year-old man has been charged with attempted arson and is expected to appear at Ballymena Magistrates’ Court this morning.
An Ancient Order of Hibernians hall was broken into and vandalised in the Rosnashane area outside Ballymoney, Co Antrim, last night, while two petrol bombs were thrown at a house in the Lisnahunshin Road, Rasharkin shortly before midnight. Early on Saturday morning, it was reported that graffiti had been daubed on the exterior of the Orange Hall in Main Street, Rasharkin.
Police are treating all the incidents as sectarian.
DUP North Antrim Assembly member Ian Paisley Jnr appealed for the attacks to stop. “It is designed to increase tension at this time and is an intolerable situation,” he said.