Belfast rocked by riots

2005-09-11 22:59

Belfast - Protestant extremists rioted for a second straight night on Sunday, attacking police and burning cars in some of the most widespread street mayhem that Belfast has experienced for a decade.

Police advised drivers to avoid several working-class Protestant parts of the city, where thousands of men and youths blocked roads and lobbed a range of objects - including homemade grenades - at police equipped with helmets, body armour and flame-retardant suits.

Chief constable Hugh Orde, commander of Northern Ireland's mostly Protestant police, blamed the Orange Order brotherhood for inspiring the riots.

The violence began when police prevented Orangemen from parading near a hard-line Catholic part of west Belfast.

Orde said 32 officers were wounded on Saturday and early on Sunday while fending off mobs of angry, often drunken Protestant men and teenagers in several parts of Belfast and in seven other predominantly Protestant towns and villages.

Bomb-making factory

He said two major outlawed Protestant groups, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force, helped to orchestrate what he called "completely organised" attacks.

He said police seized a bomb-making factory and seven firearms in follow-up raids on Sunday.

"We are very lucky we do not have dead officers this morning. It's a tribute to the way they responded and it's a tribute to their tactics," Orde said.

Orde said about 50 live rounds were fired at police positions on Saturday in northwest Belfast, scene of the most protracted and dangerous clashes, but no officer was wounded by bullets.

About a half dozen officers did suffer shrapnel wounds from homemade grenades.

On Sunday night, several hundred men and youths blocked roads and intersections in east and north Belfast.

Homemade grenades

Rioters, covering their faces with scarves, pelted police vehicles with petrol bombs, bottles, rocks and paint-filled balloons.

Homemade grenades containing packs of nails were lobbed into a police barracks in west Belfast, but the explosions injured nobody.

This weekend, police and soldiers said they fired about 430 British-style plastic bullets - blunt-nosed cylinders formally called baton rounds - at rioters.

They also deployed massive mobile water cannons, but these proved ineffective in clearing the streets.

There were just two confirmed civilian casualties, although typically in Belfast riots, wounded rioters avoid hospitals for fear of being arrested there.

In several locations, Catholic hard-liners also joined in the all-night fray, tossing rocks, bottles and other objects into police lines and the Protestant crowds beyond.

Responsibility

Orde said Orange Order leaders encouraged rioting by organising sit-down protests on major roads and intersections.

Most of these confrontations soon turned violent.

"The Orange Order must bear substantial responsibility for this. They publicly called people on to the streets.

"I think if you do that, you cannot then abdicate responsibility," he said.

But in a statement, the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's largest fraternal group with more than 50 000 members, rejected Orde's criticisms as "intemperate, inflammatory and inaccurate".

The group described police operations as "policing at its worst".

- AP