Sectarian violence continues

A Catholic woman whose north Belfast home was hit by blast bombers today said she believed the attack was meant to kill.

The bombing by unionist paramilitaries of the home of mother-of-two Sharon O’Shea took place near the route of Tuesday’s contentious Orange Order parade.

Windows were shattered when the device was thrown at the house on Mountainview Gardens, off the Crumlin Road, early today. A car parked outside was also damaged.

Ms O’Shea, who lives there with her two young sons, needed hospital treatment for cuts after being showered with glass.

But she told BBC Radio: “If it actually had come into the house I wouldn’t be here. I would have been dead.

“They obviously meant business throwing it at the bedroom. There was no way for me to get out.”

Sharon O’Shea, who is 28, was in bed when a car pulled up outside and a blast bomb was thrown at her bedroom window in Mountainview Gardens.

The blast showered her bed and the baby’s cot with glass. She sustained minor cuts.

The house is close to Ardoyne shops scene of this weeks contentious Twelfth parade on Tuesday and the serious nationalist rioting that followed.

Sinn Féin assembly member Michael Ferguson said such attacks accompanied the Orange marching season each year in north Belfast.

“This is a sectarian attack that was intended to kill,” he added.

Trouble also broke out between loyalists and nationalists in west Belfast during the week.

Over 100 loyalists carrying knives, iron bars and one wielding a samurai sword, poured into the nationalist Lenadoon estate at around 1am on Tuesday and hand-to-hand fighting ensued.

Gerard O’Neill, a Sinn Féin councillor who was present at the time, said the first sign of trouble was an attack on a taxi driver on the nearby Blacks Road.

“With all the noise these loyalists were making, residents soon came out of their homes to see what was happening, then it was just mayhem. One of these loyalists, who had a t-shirt over his head, was taking swipes at people with a samurai sword in Horn Drive and others had iron bars.”

O’Neill said that when the PSNI arrived, the PSNI began herding nationalist residents further back into their own estate rather than moving the loyalists out of Lenadoon.

“These were not kids, they were grown men and I’m pretty sure they weren’t all from that small estate on Blacks Road. I think other people may have come from elsewhere to join them in what appears to be an orchestrated attack on our community.”

Urgent Appeal