The hardline loyalist splinter group, the Orange Volunteers, has admitted responsibility for a grenade attack on a Catholic-owned pub in Castledawson, Co Derry. Nine people escaped when the device was thrown at the window of McNally's Inn on Monday night.
It bounced off the window and exploded on the ground outside. Three Turkish lorry-drivers sitting beside the window were unhurt.
The bar is owned by a former Sinn Fein councillor, Mr Francie McNally. He said it was only because of reinforced glass that his customers were alive. Mr McNally's brother, Phelim, was killed by loyalists 11 years ago. He said: "I was in the bar with eight customers. We were very lucky. The windows came in around us. Three long-distance lorry-drivers from Istanbul were sitting right beside the window."
The Orange Volunteers have carried out several gun and bomb attacks on homes and businesses in south Derry in the past month.
In a statement, the group threatened "more strikes against our enemies in Ulster".
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, said the attack was clearly aimed to kill and maim. "This is just the latest in a series of attacks on the wider nationalist community in Northern Ireland and indeed on the deep commitment of the people of this island for peace as expressed in the referendums on the Good Friday agreement."
He added: "Those who call themselves the Orange Volunteers have no mandate from the people and every effort must be made to bring them to justice."
A Sinn Fein Assembly member, Mr John Kelly, said local people were living in fear. "They are once again looking under their cars and looking after their security with measures we thought were redundant. The whole ethos of the Orange Volunteers is very worrying.
"How do you control people who are on a path of destruction? Every time we come to a solution we get this, especially in rural areas. We have this kind of attack on nationalists to frighten them and change political progress."
The Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster, Mr Martin McGuinness, said: "The use of a grenade in this attack is worrying. A consignment of such devices was smuggled from South Africa for use by loyalist groups during the 1980s. The recently formed Orange Volunteers now has access to the South African arms cache."
The RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said that the attempted bombing was an attack on the peace process and was aimed at "unnerving others".
In Belfast a 24-year-old man escaped with a cut lip after paramilitaries broke into his flat on the loyalist Belvoir Estate on Monday night. A group of men smashed their way into the premises with a sledgehammer. The man escaped by locking himself in a room.
A 28-year-old man is recovering in hospital after a so-called punishment attack in the loyalist Sandy Row in south Belfast. He was shot in the thigh.