Nationalist SDLP assembly member Dolores Kelly said: “Republican dissidents seem to be upping their game and becoming more emboldened by recent events.”
It comes less than a week after a 250lb car bomb caused damage to the wall and security hut at Newry courthouse in County Down. No-one was hurt.
Meanwhile, the family of a man shot dead by the Real IRA have said he was not an informer or drug dealer but claimed he had been subject to “continual harassment” by MI5.
Kieran Doherty, 31, was stripped then tied up and left in a remote lane on the outskirts of Londonderry on Wednesday night.
“We repeat that he was neither an informer nor a criminal. He was never in his life associated with drugs,” the family said in a statement. “Kieran was under continuous harassment by MI5 in the months before his death,” they alleged. “Repeated attempts were made to recruit him as an informer. He rejected all these attempts.”
The Real IRA has admitted responsibility for the killing and said Mr Doherty was one of its members.
