By Cronan Scanlon

GARDAI are investigating a "callous" gun and bomb attack on an unoccupied house near the Derry border at St Johnston at the weekend.

At around 9.30pm on Monday night, a Priest in Derry received an anonymous phonecall informing him that a pipe bomb was planted at a house at Transallagh, St Johnston. The information was relayed to Gardai in Letterkenny who later discovered a partially exploded "viable" device outside the house.

As a result, eleven local families were evacuated from their homes on Monday night while an exclusion zone was formed and the area was sealed off.

They were not allowed to return until Tuesday afternoon when Army bomb disposal experts dealt with the device which was attached to a five gallon drum of petrol.

Just over a month ago, a 26 year old Derry man who owned the house, was seriously injured after the car in which he and his girlfriend were travelling in was riddled with bullets.

Up to four masked men approached the car and fired at least one shot through the window of the car, injuring the man in the neck.

The couple had only recently moved to the area.

The female passenger attempted to escape, however, she was bundled into a large blue van by the masked men and later dumped out about a kilometre or two from the scene of the original incident.

The man has since fled the country. A Garda spokesman said they are investigating both incidents and are appealing for witnesses.

Meanwhile, Local Parish Priest, Fr Dan Carr, said the attack was "very callous" adding that an innocent passer-by could have been killed or seriously injured.

Fr Carr said the incident had "nothing to do" with the local community and he was annoyed that the area was being given a bad name.

"We have a lot of tremendous people from the North living in the locality, however, there seems to be an issue with this one person. The people out there (in Transallagh) are law abiding, decent people and are very annoyed that this is happening here," Fr Carr said.

Anyone with any information should contact Letterkenny Garda station on 074 9167100.