Police hurt in Belfast riots
2002-08-11 16:01
Belfast - Seven police officers were injured on Saturday in rioting that followed a day of traditionally divisive Protestant parades across Northern Ireland.
Police said officers came under attack by protesters in the
predominantly Catholic Short Strand neighbourhood of East Belfast. A spokesperson did not give details of the officers' injuries.
Rioters from a crowd of about 200 hurled five gas bombs and a
number of other objects across a police line into a nearby
Protestant area, police said.
Police said a group of women and children and a line of cars
blocked officers who were trying to enter the Catholic area.
The Short Strand has been the centre of bitter fighting between Catholics and Protestants in recent months.
Saturday's trouble began as members of the Protestant Apprentice Boys brotherhood arrived back in Belfast after rallying without trouble in the predominantly Catholic city of Londonderry.
Protestants in period costumes dramatized their ancestors'
defiance of a 105-day siege by Catholic forces that ended on August 12, 1689, when English naval reinforcements sailed up the city's River Foyle.
Catholic hard-liners had opposed the marches but dropped their
objections.
In Belfast earlier Saturday, police backed by soldiers shoved
Catholic youths onto the sidewalk to clear the way for a 200-strong
Apprentice Boys parade past Ardoyne, a militant Catholic district
that has been the focal point for more than a year of sectarian
clashes with Protestants in north Belfast.
Catholic youths threw a few bottles at the procession but
leaders of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party kept their roadside
demonstration otherwise peaceful. - Sapa-AP
- SAPA