Man killed in bomb blast outside house

A man was killed in a bomb explosion in Coleraine, Co Derry, police said today.

He died instantly when a device exploded outside a house at Winston Way in the town late last night.

Army bomb disposal experts were sent to the scene to examine a second device found nearby and several neighbouring houses were evacuated.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility or indication who was responsible for the first murder of 2002.

The killing came in a night of New Year violence during which a woman and four young children escaped injury when a bomb thrown through the living room window of their home in flashpoint North Belfast and a bomb was defused outside a policeman’s home in Co Down.

Police at the scene of the Belfast attack said the bomb had been a ‘‘substantial device’’ which had contained shrapnel and which caused extensive damage to the room.

The Catholic woman and her four children were upstairs in their Manor Street home when a when a white car pulled up and, according to local people, a man got out and threw the bomb.

Police were treating the attack as sectarian and Sinn Fein claimed the attackers shouted ‘‘Up the UDA’’ and yelled sectarian abuse at the house as their car sped away.

At Annalong on the Co Down coast a pipe bomb type device was made safe outside the police officer’s home after army bomb experts carried out two controlled explosions.

It was the second time the officer had been targeted in the house. On April 27 last year another pipe bomb was defused at the house.

Meanwhile a 39-year-old man was shot in the leg in a paramilitary style attack in Newtownards, Co Down.

He was found lying in a lane way in the Scrabo estate in the town said police.