'Pipe bombs aimed at blacks'

2003-07-01 13:17

Belfast - British army experts in Northern Ireland disarmed two homemade bombs overnight on Monday near the scene of attacks which targeted black South Africans, police said on Tuesday.

The pipe bombs - found in an abandoned house in a Protestant neighbourhood in south Belfast - were similar to those hurled over the weekend at houses occupied by South African families.

Police suspect that the attacks were the work of extremists close to the Ulster Defense Association, a loyalist paramilitary group.

Northern Ireland has endured three decades of strife between Protestants and Catholics, but with few non-Europeans in the province, racist attacks have been rare.

- AFX