Red Hand Defenders threatened schoolgirls' parents

Today's bomb attack comes after the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for loyalist paramilitaries who are supposed to be on ceasefire, threatened to target the schoolgirls’ parents unless they take an alternative route to school.

Many nationalists have refused to take the back route, saying they are being forced into a situation like that in Alabama, when the white authorities made blacks sit on the back of buses and refused to give them access to education.