Local politicians have condemned a pipe-bomb attack on a house in Larne, Co Antrim, in which a Catholic family narrowly escaped injury.
A mother and son were in the living room of their home at Laharna Avenue when the device was thrown through the window on Tuesday night. The bomb partially exploded. The local police commander, RUC Supt Karen Kennedy, said the incident bore all the hallmarks of a sectarian attack. Patrols had been increased in the town following a recent upsurge in such attacks, an RUC spokesman added.
The town's SDLP MLA, Mr Danny O'Connor, who has prepared a dossier on 150 sectarian attacks on Catholic families in the Larne area, said the people responsible needed to be "taken off the street". "They need to be rooted out of our society because it is only then that the decent people of Larne, both Protestant and Catholic, can sleep in their beds at night."
An Ulster Unionist MLA for the area, Mr Roy Beggs, said he "utterly deplored" the attack. The Alliance Party leader, Mr Sean Neeson, said he was so concerned about "growing lawlessness" that he would seek a meeting with the RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan.
In Ballymena, Co Antrim, a woman and her three children were unharmed when a pipebomb was thrown at the outer wall of the family's home on the Circular Road. The device failed to explode.
Meanwhile, four men were wounded in separate paramilitary-style attacks in Belfast, Newtownabbey and Portadown, Co Armagh. Two 18-year-old men received gunshot wounds to their legs during an incident in the Jordanstown Road area of Newtownabbey on the outskirts of north Belfast on Tuesday night.
Earlier, a man was shot in the leg at Prince Andrew Gardens in the Donegall Road area of south Belfast. A man, believed to be in his 20s, received gunshot wounds to both legs while walking along the Garvaghy Road in Portadown on Tuesday night.