New Year's Eve pipe bombs

Francie Brolly

Unionist paramilitaries who planted two pipe bombs in a public house in Lime Market Street, Coleraine on New Year's Eve were intent on causing serious injuries and even death, said Sinn Féin Assembly member Francie Brolly.

British Army bomb squad members defused the two devices after a telephone warning was received.

"We had not even reached the New Year before these loyalist thugs were inflicting their sectarianism on the people of Coleraine who were still celebrating Christmas," said Brolly. "These pipe bombs were carefully hidden in the bar and took a great time to find. Unionist paramilitaries are intending to start 2004 the way they ended last year, attacking nationalists with these deadly devices."

Meanwhile, a young couple and their two-year-old child escaped serious injury after loyalists threw concrete blocks through the window of their mobile home in Kilrea, County Derry. The sectarian attack on the family's home in the Drumagarner Road area occurred at around 1.30am on Saturday 3 January.