PSNI to launch awareness campaign on hate crimes

Police in the North are launching a campaign to raise awareness of hate crime in Belfast later today.

The move comes just a day after a house occupied by Lithuanian immigrants was targeted in a petrol-bomb attack in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.

Two men and two women, one of whom is eight months pregnant, were in the house at the time, but all four escaped without injury.

The latest PSNI statistics show that racist incidents are on the rise, with more than 1,000 reported in the 12 months up to March 2007.

The message of the new hate-crime campaign is: "Nobody deserves this and nobody deserves to get away with it."