Girl, aged 10, plays with bomb thrown at family home

A BOMB attack on a prison officer’s home in which his young daughter had a narrow escape after unwittingly picking up the device was branded contemptible yesterday.

The 10-year-old girl handled the unexploded bomb after finding it in the garden of the house in Bangor, Co Down. It had been thrown at the Brunswick Road house in the early hours of Wednesday morning, smashing a window but failing to detonate, police said.

The little girl later found the bomb while playing in the front garden and took it inside the house. It was several hours before her parents realised what she had found and raised the alarm.

Army bomb disposal experts later made the device safe.

It was the latest attack on the home of a prison officer in recent weeks, and like the previous bombs was thought to have been planted by loyalists.

Both loyalists and dissident republicans in Maghaberry Prison in Co Antrim have been protesting about the conditions in which they are held.

Peter Russell, director general of the Prison Service in Northern Ireland, said: “Any attack on prison officers is despicable and amounts to an attack on working men and women who are simply doing their job to support their family.

“This attack in particular, which could have cost the life of an innocent child, is utterly contemptible.”

Police confirmed the device was found at the front of the house by a 10-year-old girl.

Alliance Party deputy leader Eileen Bell, a councillor for the Bangor area, hit out at the bombers. “Once again the family home of prison officers has been attacked. There is a young family there and it is disgraceful that these people should know where these people live and be able to put them in jeopardy.”

Peter Weir, a former Democratic Unionist Party Assembly member for the area, said the family were lucky none of them had been seriously injured or killed. “This was a despicable act and I think we are very fortunate that we are not talking about the death of a 10-year-old. The perpetrators of this have clearly shown a callous disregard for life.”