Dissident republicans are being blamed for abandoning a large incendiary device aboard a hijacked bus in west Belfast at the weekend. Police said countless lives were put at risk.
Two masked gunmen left the device in a sports holdall on the bus late on Saturday afternoon and told the driver to take it through Ladybrooke estate and abandon the vehicle outside Woodbourne PSNI station.
However, the driver left the bus at the junction of Black's Road and Stewartstown Road and the police sealed off the area, closing the road and evacuating homes. The alert lasted some four hours and British army bomb experts carried out a controlled explosion.
Mr Peter Farrar, the acting district commander, condemned the hijacking and the bombing attempt. "It was a very unstable device filled with petrol," he said. "If this had gone off, basically the whole bus would have exploded and a large fireball would have encompassed the whole bus and anyone standing nearby. We totally believe this to be the work of dissident republicans."
In east Belfast, pipe bombers attacked the homes of two retired prison officers and two police officers were hurt in violent clashes in Antrim town.
The attacks on the prison officers coincide with the "dirty" protest at Maghaberry prison, Co Antrim, by republicans demanding segregation from loyalist inmates. Earlier this month prisoners carried out a roof-top protest. Prisoners supporters say the dispute could escalate and they refuse to rule out the possibility of a hunger strike.
One pipe bomb was left at an address on the Bloomfield Road, the second incident was at a home on Holywood Road. No one was injured in the incidents.
In Antrim, two officers were hurt following the latest clashes between rivals in housing estates. The unrest involved loyalist youths in the Stiles estate and republican youths in the Rathenraw estate.