Catholic family may move home after loyalist attack

A Catholic family are considering leaving their home in Co Derry after they were targeted by loyalists last night for the second time in a year.

The couple and their four children were in bed when five shots were fired through their living room window in the staunchly Protestant Harper’s Hill area of Coleraine.

A petrol bomb was also thrown at a car parked outside, but it failed to ignite.

Nobody was injured in the attack, but the family are now considering their future in the area. A pipe bomb was also thrown through the window of their home last year.

John Dallat, a local SDLP Assembly member, visited the family today and afterwards denounced those responsible for the attack.

“The thugs who did this don’t represent either community, but are hell-bent on inflaming sectarianism in an area that could do without it,” he said.

The targeted family have lived in the area for more than 30 years and are involved in local community work.

Mr Dallat said he would be raising the attack with the British Government’s security minister for the North, Jane Kennedy, when she meets an SDLP delegation to discuss a loyalist campaign of violence against Catholics throughout the six counties.