Sinn Féin councillor Joe O'Donnell has branded the loyalist 'no first strike policy' a joke. He was reacting to a bomb attack on the home of a nationalist family in the Short Strand area of East Belfast at just after midnight on Thursday morning 4 July.
Martina McGuigan, her partner Darren Carlisle and the couple's three children were at home when the bomb, which was thrown at a bedroom window of their Bryson Court home, bounced off and landed in the back yard, where it exploded.
Bryson Court is on the interface and has been under constant attack from loyalists. Due to this, the couple's children were asleep on mattresses in a front room. Normally the children would have been asleep at the back of the house.
"It's terrifying to thing what would have happened if the children had been in the back rooms and the bomb came through that window," said Martina.
The couple believe the bomber climbed on to the roof of a house in the loyalist Susan Street before throwing the device.
At present the 'peaceline' wall in Bryson Street is being heightened but both Martina McGuigan and Darren Carlisle don't believe it will make any difference to their lives if the loyalists on the other side insist on carrying out their attacks.
Speaking to An Phoblacht Sinn Féin's Joe O'Donnell said, "since the announcement of their 'no first strike policy' nationalist families have been attacked with bricks, bottles, pipe bombs and pipe bombs. This violence is one sided. I would challenge members of the Loyalist Commission to explain exactly what they mean by a 'no first strike policy".
Meanwhile it has been disclosed that a Short Strand woman is taking Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan to court. Kelly Ann Johnson is seeking a judicial review of the Ombudsman's failure to investigate her complaint against an RUC/PSNI inspector who she says refused to act in order to allow her to bring her sick son to the doctor's surgery on the Newtownards Road.
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