The British government faced last-minute pressure tonight to abandon plans to demolish army watchtowers in Northern Ireland after a bomb attack heightened fears of a new dissident offensive.
Two police officers escaped injury when their patrol car was attacked by a coffee jar device in Armagh. The Continuity IRA was blamed for the bomb attempt - the third on both sides of the Border in three days.
As British army engineers prepared to start dismantling two military look-out posts in south Armagh, unionists warned the level of terrorist threat remained too high.
Mr Danny Kennedy, an Ulster Unionist councillor for the area, said: "There is an element at work in the area and the country as a whole, intent on causing death and destruction as recent incidents have proved.
"It would be sheer and utter folly to scale down security while there is a very real threat to peace from republican dissidents."
The officers were responding to a call from a member of the public when the bomb struck their car as it travelled along the Monaghan Road. The windscreen was cracked but the device failed to explode. Both officers were shaken but managed to drive on.
On Monday, dissident terrorists ordered a gas engineer to drive a massive incendiary bomb to tax offices in Belfast city centre. Army explosives experts defused the device as a major security operation was mounted in the area where the Belfast Marathon passed close by hours later.
A primed pipe bomb was discovered near Government buildings in Dublin 24 hours later. Security sources again blamed dissident republicans.
As the bombing campaign intensifies, work on pulling down two observation towers at Tievecrum, near Forkill and Cloghoge, outside Newry begins tomorrow. The project, which will take up to a year to complete, was agreed by the British government as part of its blueprint to move the peace process forward.
PA