Monday, November 26, 2001 Kislev 11, 5762 Israel Time: 04:52 (GMT+2)
Last update - 14:42 25/11/2001
Petrol bombs hurled in fresh N.Irish violence
BELFAST - Street violence erupted in a flashpoint area of Belfast on Sunday, just two days after Protestant hardliners suspended their controversial blockade near one of the city's Roman Catholic schools.
Petrol bombs and other missiles were thrown during the disturbances at North Queen Street - where Roman Catholics who want a united Ireland and Protestants who want the province to remain in the United Kingdom live cheek-by-jowl.
Police and British soldiers came under attack as petrol bombs, bottles and other missiles were thrown during the rioting, which started at 4:30 a.m., and several police vehicles and windows of nearby houses were damaged.
A police spokesman said they were investigating reports that a man had been injured. The spokesman said calm had been restored to the area.
The clashes occurred less than five kilometers from the Ardoyne Road, where Protestant hardliners on Friday suspended their sectarian blockade of a school run to the Holy Cross Girls' Catholic Primary School.
Dozens of young girls, some as young as four years old, have endured a daily torrent of insults and obscenities from Protestant adults for the past 12 weeks as their parents led them to the school in Belfast's Ardoyne district.
Following talks by the province's First Minister David Trimble and his Catholic deputy Mark Durkan with both sides, Protestant residents called a halt to their protest after a package of community safety measures was put to them.
Among the measures they want to see addressed is closed circuit television and more police patrols in the area.
Another Catholic primary school was badly damaged in an arson attack on Sunday, a local priest said.
Catholic priest Monsignor Thomas Bartley, who lives in the grounds of St Anne's Primary School in Dunmurry on the outskirts of Belfast, said he raised the alarm around 7:30 A.M.
"They drove a car in, put it beside the building, set the car alight, and put part of the building on fire," he said. "One block has about four classrooms and it is utterly destroyed."
Police said they had not established a motive for the attack.
Optimism felt in London, Dublin and Washington about the Irish Republican Army's agreement to put its arms out of use has failed to quell the rancour that has haunted Northern Ireland for generations of sectarian feuding. |
