Loyalists are believed responsible for a bomb attack on the home of a Catholic family in Armagh. Three children and their mother escaped without injury when a blast bomb exploded at their house in Ashley Avenue.
Ms Kay O'Connor was watching television when the device was thrown through the lounge window around 11.30 p.m. on Monday. She was not hurt. Her three children aged 11, eight and five were asleep in their bedrooms.
The explosion shattered the large lounge window, demolished the window sill and loosened roof tiles. Neighbours comforted Ms O'Connor and her children until the emergency services arrived.
The RUC evacuated a dozen homes while a British army bomb disposal expert examined the scene and took away the remains of the device. A neighbour said: "Kay is a very lucky woman. She was sitting beside the lounge window when the bomb went off. She was showered with glass but luckily wasn't injured."
Ms O'Connor's husband, Michael, a taxi-driver, was working when the attack took place. He described the people who bombed his home as "sick cowards".
The RUC said it was treating the bombing as sectarian. No group has claimed responsibility. Mr Vincent McKenna, of the anti-paramilitary group Families Against Intimidation and Terror, said the attack bore all the hallmarks of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, which now called itself the Orange Volunteers or the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a cover name for the UDA.
"There is no doubt that this was a loyalist attack and that the group responsible have the support of loyalist terrorists who are supposed to be in the peace process."
He called on Mr Gary McMichael, the leader of the UDA's political wing, the Ulster Democratic Party, and Pastor Kenny McClinton, who acted as an intermediary for the LVF with the international decommissioning body, to condemn the attack.
"There can be no room in our society for these cowardly sick animals who, like their republican counterparts, have chosen women and children as the targets for their criminal campaign," he said.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs strongly condemned the at tack. "It is very sad that when the Christian family is celebrating the season of goodwill to all, extreme bigotry has motivated this heinous act against the O'Connor family," Mr Andrews said last night.