The Sinn Féin chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, has accused the police of assaulting two republicans in the Short Strand area of east Belfast, breaking the arm of one and the hand of the other.
One of those injured was Sinn Féin press officer Mr Paddy McDaid. His hand was broken when he was struck by a police officer while videoing another republican whose arm was broken in the alleged assault, said Sinn Féin.
Another man suffered a head injury in the incident said Sinn Féin. A party spokesman said the Police Ombudsman would be asked to investigate the matter and the three men would be suing the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) for damages. Mr McLaughlin said the incidents were further proof that the PSNI is being partisan against nationalists when policing interface areas. The PSNI has denied this claim. On the alleged assaults, a spokeswoman said anyone with a complaint should contact the Ombudsman.
Meanwhile, the SDLP Finance Minister, Mr Sean Farren, has accused Sinn Féin of deliberately stoking sectarian tensions in his constituency of North Antrim. "While trying to present themselves as protecting nationalist interests and nationalist communities throughout the constituency, Sinn Féin activists have been doing the exact opposite.
"In Ballymena, Moyle and Ballymoney council areas they have been encouraging direct confrontation with the police and with members of the unionist and loyalist communities," he said.
A Sinn Féin spokesman denied Mr Farren's allegations. "Sinn Féin has challenged Mr Farren to produce evidence for his claims and he has been unable to do so."
In Carrickfergus, Co Antrim in the early hours of yesterday morning a Catholic couple and their two teenage sons narrowly avoided injury after a suspected sectarian attack on their home. A pipe bomb hurled through their window exploded in the kitchen as the family slept upstairs.
Local SDLP Assembly member Mr Danny O'Connor described the attack as "blatantly sectarian" and said the family had been attacked on other occasions.
The Ulster Unionist MP for East Antrim, Mr Roy Beggs, condemned the attack and recent attacks on the home of a prison officer in Larne and on Lourdes Primary School in Whitehead.
"If those who carried out these attacks on persons and property under cover of darkness claim themselves to be loyalist, one must ask the question, to whom or to what are they loyal? Their contemptible activities must be condemned unreservedly by all public representatives," said Mr Beggs.
The former Alliance leader, Mr Sean Neeson, called for a policy of "zero tolerance" of paramilitaries in Carrickfergus.
Police do not suspect a sectarian motive for an attack on a house in Craigavon, Co Armagh in which a 41-year-old man suffered a minor hand injury. Up to five shotgun blasts were fired into his home on Sunday night.
A 19-year-old man is being treated in hospital after he was shot in a suspected "punishment" shooting in east Belfast. He was found on Sunday night in Mersey Street with a single gunshot wound to his right calf.
