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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldsnow who wrote (3162)	9/5/2001 3:05:45 PM
From: chalu2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Where are the nations of the world regarding this activity? Silent, perhaps, because it affords no opportunity to criticize Jews, and is thus "uninteresting"?: Bomb Explodes Near Belfast Pupils; Police Injured By Martin Cowley Reuters BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Sept. 4) - Roman Catholic schoolgirls and their parents fled in panic and four police officers were injured when a pipe bomb thrown by Protestants exploded on Wednesday outside a flashpoint Catholic school in Belfast. The British-ruled province's top official was forced to break off his holiday after the sharp escalation of violence on the third day of a sectarian standoff that poses a major threat to Northern Ireland's shaky peace process. ''What we have seen develop in the last few days is the path to barbarism,'' Northern Ireland Minister John Reid said in a statement. His office said he would return to Belfast on Thursday. There were looks of sheer terror on the faces of the Catholic girls, some as young as four, as the bomb exploded in the midst of police guarding the girls during the third day of anti-Catholic rioting by Protestants. ''May God forgive them, for they are absolutely sick,'' said a middle-aged woman among the Catholic parents. None of the girls, who have been subjected to a barrage of anti-Catholic hatred and rock-throwing every day since the new school term began Monday, was injured. But the bomb inflicted serious shrapnel wounds on two of the injured policemen, police said. They said three suspects were arrested. The extremist Protestant militia Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by elements of other Protestant militant groups, claimed responsibility for the bombing outside the Holy Cross Girls Primary School in North Belfast, a sharply contested area in the province's endless sectarian feuding. The attack was strongly condemned on both sides of the sectarian divide, by republican Roman Catholics and Protestant pro-British loyalists alike. ''This is not about children going to school any longer, this is about people who are hellbent on creating trouble,'' Billy Hutchinson of the Progressive Unionist Party and a member of the Northern Irish assembly, said. ''I'm sick to my stomach and I'm ashamed to even say that I'm a Loyalist,'' Hutchinson added. CATHOLICS VOW TO KEEP SCHOOL OPEN The incident was by far the most serious in the standoff that has shocked the world with images of weeping Catholic girls being pelted by stones and verbally abused. Catholic school and community leaders said it was remarkable none of the girls had been injured, but parents vowed to keep bringing their children to school and to continue using the front entrance which directly faces Protestant homes. ''These children were very traumatized, it was premeditated and orchestrated,'' a Catholic mother said. ''But they will not stop us bringing our children to school.'' A statement issued after an emergency meeting by the school's board of governors said Holy Cross would not close. ''We view with grave concern the further deterioration in events but wish to assure parents that we and the staff, with the support of the community, will continue to provide an education for your children in as normal a manner as is possible in these difficult circumstances,'' the statement said. Protestants living near the school, increasingly concerned about their portrayal as instigators of the violence, also met to discuss the day's developments and afterwards said their relations with police were at a low ebb and accused them of brutality. ''Children, women an senior citizens have been beaten and brutalized,'' solicitor Billy Mitchell said, reading a statement on behalf of the residents group. DAY ENDS CALMLY Catholic parents escorted about 20 of the youngest children away from the school at noon without incident, along a massive cordon of riot police and armored vehicles leading 300 yards (meters) from the front of the school to a Catholic area. ''I'm very relieved,'' said Tanya, a Catholic woman, as she led away her four-year-old daughter Emer, her two ribboned pig tails peeking through her anorak under the rain. About 80 more children emerged later, but only small knots of Protestants stood to watch the bedraggled Catholic girls and their parents walk home through the cordon in driving rain. Some loyalists jeered, with one yelling out: ''It's still our road.'' The British Northern Ireland office said the province's security minister Jane Kennedy was holding security talks ''to defuse the tensions.'' ''It is outrageous that this should have happened,'' a spokesman for the Northern Ireland office said. ''It is self-destructive insanity.'' Reut13:06 09-05-01