Loyalists linked to racist attacks, intimidation

A mother and her 14-month-old daughter have escaped injury following a racist bomb attack on their home in south Belfast.

The pipe bomb partially exploded after it was thrown into a garden at the house in Melrose Street, off the Lisburn Road on Friday night. Loyalist paramilitaries have been blamed for the incident.

Chinese national Lin Jingjing said she was in the house with her young daughter who was asleep when the bomb went off. She said that she heard a bang and then saw a small bag outside her house.

Terrified by the attack she said that she now wants to leave the area. “I want to go, move from my house,” she said.

Anna Lo, Alliance Assembly member for south Belfast, said she was shocked somebody would put lives at risk by carrying out such an attack.

“We should just be thankful that nobody was hurt,” she said. “The people responsible have no regard for the well-being of others.

“The Chinese community have been on Melrose Street for a very long time and I am surprised that this has happened as we are a multi-cultural society and the Chinese community work very, very hard in this community.”

C18 LINK

The attack came 24 hours after a racist paint attack on the Belfast Islamic Centre. It has been blamed on Loyalist C18, a division of the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, named in honour of Adolf Hitler.

Loyalist youths were blamed for the paint bomb attack on the Islamic centre in Belfast’s Wellington Park district.

Sinn Féin assembly member Alex Maskey visited the centre to offer his support.

“Belfast is now a multicultural city and we should be proud to be home for people of all different backgrounds regardless of creed, colour or nationality,” he said.

POSTERS TARGET VICTIMS

Meanwhile, loyalists have erected dozens of abusive posters showing pictures of two young women who were the victims of a vicious sectarian attack in south-west Belfast last week.

The posters of a Catholic woman and her two Protestant friend were placed on lampposts, walls and shop shutters along nearby Sandy Row. Those responsible for the attack are understood to have been enraged that details of the incident emerged in the media.

The Catholic victims’ mother said her daughter was still deeply affected by the attack.

“The more people have said ‘you’re very lucky you lived to tell the tale’, the more it has hit home,” she said.

Urgent Appeal