POLICE in Northern Ireland are braced for further rioting in Belfast, amid warnings that republicans plan to disrupt Orange Order parades.
Three officers were shot and a further 24 injured during two clashes in the early hours of yesterday as Protestants began their annual July 12 celebrations.
Armed riot police last night moved in to remove more than 100 nationalist protesters staging a sit-down demonstration on the Crumlin Road, a notorious point in the Catholic Ardoyne district that Orangemen march along on their way back from the commemorations.
A police helicopter hovered while fortified Land Rovers surrounded the area as the tactical support group moved in. A crowd supporting the protesters outside the Ardoyne shops attacked officers with a range of missiles, including a petrol bomb.
Police appealed for calm, and urged community leaders to use their influence to help restore order.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was expecting further “orchestrated” trouble.
Chief Superintendent Mark Hamilton said that there were small groups “who seem hell-bent on wrecking their own communities”.
Gerry Kelly, a Sinn Fein Member of the Legislative Assembly and former IRA prisoner, blamed the Continuity IRA for the unrest. The dissident group was exploiting “antisocial elements” in both communities, he claimed.
Basil McCrea, of the Ulster Unionist Party, and a member of the police board, said the violence was “worse than it has been for a number of years”.
One policeman last night remained in hospital in a stable condition after he and two colleagues were hit by a shotgun fired by a masked man in a crowd of nationalists who had attacked the police in the north of the city.
Another 24 officers sustained injuries at this flashpoint in the North Queen Street area, and in the Broadway area in the southwest of the city, where police tried to separate nationalist youths from those attending bonfires in the nearby Donegall Road.
Officers were attacked with stones, bottles and petrol bombs, and responded with water cannon and baton rounds. In one incident seven people, including two young children, were injured when they were struck by a car. One witness, Ruth Patterson, a Democratic Unionist councillor, said that it was a “scene of utter chaos”.
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