Toddler escapes injury as loyalist attacks continues
Just how close the UDA have come to killing Catholics was shown
this week when a four-year-old girl had a narrow escape when she
picked up a pipe bomb and innocently brought the deadly device
into her home. Cliodhna Magee found the bomb in the Springfield
Road area of Belfast last Tuesday and, as children do, she
carried it into the house and gave it to her mother. Fortunately,
the bomb failed to explode.
Mother of three Roisin Magee described her horror as she saw her
young daughter clutching the lethal weapon in the hallway of
their home. This is the third loyalist attack on members of the
Magee family in recent weeks. The family has decided to flee the
house for fear of further attacks.
The Belfast attack came almost a week after a similar device
seriously injured a Catholic workman in Dungannon. The
53-year-old foreman was climbing into a digger on a Moygashel
building site when the bomb exploded. He was rushed to Craigavon
hospital after workmen found him covered in blood. He was treated
for serious facial injuries and described as in `stable'
condition.
This followed three overnight attacks, one a short distance from
the Dungannon building site and two in Limavady, County Derry. A
device exploded in the front garden of the home of a Catholic
family in Gornasasor, Dungannon shortly after midnight. The bomb,
made of fireworks and packed with shrapnel, damaged a nearby car
and broke windows in the garage. The family, sleeping upstairs at
the time, escaped injury. In Limavady, Catholic homes in Eventide
Gardens and Edenmore Park were targeted around 10pm on Monday
night.
Meanwhile, the discovery of a Belfast loyalist pipe bomb factory
came within hours of another attack on Catholic families living
in the north of the city. In the early hours of Sunday morning, a
bomb exploded at the rear of a house in Alliance Avenue.
Hugh McInally was one of three people asleep upstairs when the
device exploded, ripping the back door off its hinges and
smashing windows at the rear of the house. Windows in a
neighbour's house, a pensioner who lives alone, were also
damaged. Nellie Classon described hearing a noise and looking out
a back window only seconds before the device exploded, showering
the upstairs bathroom with glass. Her 12-year-old grandson was
staying in the house on the night of the attack. ``We were very
frightened,'' said Nellie, ``I haven't slept since the attack.''
McInally, originally from Glasgow, says his home was targeted
because he is a Catholic. Alliance Avenue backs onto the loyalist
Glenbryne estate and despite repeated loyalists attacks, NIO
security minister Adam Ingram has refused local requests to
upgrade the peace line. The twelve-foot-high corrugated fence has
been substantially breached at the back of a number of Alliance
Avenue homes. At the back of Hugh McInally's house, the
protective fence is virtually non existent. Other homes are
equally vulnerable to sectarian attack.
However, in reply to a letter requesting further protection in
1998, Ingram said ``the policy of this government in relation to
this matter is straightforward. We do not wish to build walls and
fences to divide communities.'' Two years later and Catholic
families along Alliance Avenue are still playing the price for
the British minister's complacency.
A Catholic family living in the Seacourt estate in Larne have
been targeted for a second time in recent weeks. Shots were
fired, smashing the kitchen window, last Wednesday night. The
couple and their teenage son were uninjured. The house is
occupied by the only Catholic family in the row.
In the early hours of Thursday, 8 February, a pipe bomb was
thrown at the home of a Catholic family living in the
predominantly Protestant Fountain estate in Derry City. The
attack took place around 1am when the device partially exploded
under the couple's car. Windows in the house had been smashed in
an earlier attack.
In the Waterside area of Derry, a second Catholic family to be
targeted this week had a lucky escape when a bomb smashed through
their kitchen window and exploded. The couple and two young
nieces were asleep upstairs at the time and only discovered the
attack the following morning.
In the County Antrim village of Broughshane, a bomb was thrown at
the home of a Catholic family in Artouges Park. Tfortunately, the
living room window was double glazed and the device bounced off
and back into the garden, where it failed to explode. The family
were in the living room at the time celebrating the school exam
success of one of their children.
In a second pipe bomb attack in the village just minutes later, a
device smashed through the window of a house in the Commons area.
The couple, who are both Protestant, may have been targeted by
loyalists because one of them comes from the south of Ireland.
Attempted Mater abduction
Union Representitives at the Mater Hospital in Belfast have
raised concerns for staff safety after what appears to have been
a loyalist attempt to abduct a Catholic man last Sunday morning,
11 February.
The man was on his way to work when two cars manoeuvered in front
and behind him on the Antrim Road. Two men got out of the cars
and the Catholic man, because he was boxed in, left his car and
ran towards Lincoln Street to escape.
This incident comes only a week after Catholic workers in the
North Belfast hospital were threatened by loyalists.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)