Bombers target elderly member of police forum

A pensioner targeted in a bomb attack today claimed it happened because he was a member of a Northern Ireland policing forum.

Community stalwart John Devine and his wife Eileen, both 82, escaped injury when a blast ripped into the front of their home in the Ballymagory area of Strabane, Co Tyrone around midnight.

The couple were asleep when the device exploded on a windowsill, causing severe damage.

The bombing follows a campaign of threats and attacks on the homes of Catholic members of policing boards across Northern Ireland by dissident republicans opposed to the peace process and the new policing arrangements.

Security sources today linked rogue republican paramilitaries to the attack against Mr Devine and his wife, who are Catholics.

Mr Devine hit out at the attack, which he believed was down to his involvement on a police liaison committee.

But he vowed to defy the bombers.

“The only way they will get me out of this house, or out of Ballymagory, they would have to shoot me,” he told BBC Radio Ulster.

“I’ll still be in anything I am in. I will remain a JP and I’ll still remain on the police liaison committee.

“I was born in this village 82 years ago and I will die in it. They are as low as sewer rats.

“I said a prayer for them that they would get sense.”

Police said the couple had a lucky escape.

Superintendent Clifford Best said: “This is an horrific attack on the home of an elderly couple.

“Up until recently the room that was at the centre of this attack was used as a bedroom by one of the couple as she had trouble climbing stairs.

“It’s only by pure luck that she has not been seriously injured.”

As detectives and forensics experts trawled through the debris, police said it would take time to discover what type of device was used in the bombing.