PSNI detectives were last night trying to establish a motive for a brutal assault in south Armagh, which left a 45-year-old man critically ill in hospital.
The man was discovered lying beside a burning car at Sheetrim Road at around 10 a.m. yesterday, outside the village of Cullyhanna, by a fire service crew which was called out to deal with the blazing vehicle.
The man appeared to have been beaten with clubs over his entire body.
Police said he suffered multiple injuries. He sustained two broken legs and two broken arms and was in a critical condition.
Another incident under investigation by the PSNI occurred on Wednesday night when three masked men burst into a house at Imperial Drive in east Belfast, and shot a man several times. He was able to make his way to nearby Roseberry Road where a local person came to his aid and called an ambulance.
A British army bomb disposal team defused what police described as a "viable pipe bomb" thrown through the window of a house at New Line Crescent in Killinchy, Co Down, around 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday.
A 40-year-old man was asleep in the house at the time. Shots were also fired at the house. The man escaped uninjured. Twelve houses in the area were evacuated while the bomb was defused.
