Pensioners targeted in Belfast petrol bomb attack
A sectarian petrol bomb attack which set a row of homes on fire in Belfast was an attempt to murder pensioners as they slept, it was claimed today.
Two bungalows in the nationalist Short Strand enclave were badly damaged - but the elderly residents escaped injury - when the devices were hurled from across an interface on the loyalist lower Newtownards Road.
Fire crews and police called to the scene early today also came under stone and petrol bomb attack.
Short Strand Sinn Fein councillor Joe O’Donnell, who spent the night at the scene, insisted the attack was a carefully planned bid to kill residents.
He said: "The people of this community have no doubt, and I have no doubt, this was a premeditated attempt to murder pensioners in their beds."
One man was arrested and a number of petrol bombs were later recovered at Wolf Close and Kennilworth Place, police said.
Mr O’Donnell said the bombing followed several attacks on Short Strand residents during the rioting which flared across Northern Ireland last Thursday as violence marred the Orange Order’s Twelfth celebrations.
"Loyalists had said then: 'We’ll be back to burn your pensioners out'," he claimed.
"The people responsible for this are sick-minded savages, there’s no other word for someone who would sit and think about this."
Mr O’Donnell blamed loyalist paramilitary organisations for the attack.
"People from within the unionist community here have a very large responsibility, they can’t sit back any longer, they have to condemn this as loudly as possible.
"The people in this community are sick, sore and tired of having to put up with this and they are not prepared to take any more."
