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Three N.Irish police shot in overnight riots

12 July 2010 20:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Three police officers were shot and injured in overnight riots in Belfast during an annual celebration often marked by violence between Catholics and Protestants, police said on Monday, APA reports quoting â€œReutersâ€.
The Sunday night riots took place near bonfires lit by pro-British Protestant groups each year to burn Irish flags and pictures of politicians from Catholic backgrounds who want a united Ireland.
Police said 27 officers had been injured in two separate locations, including the three shot, but did not clarify the exact motives for the unrest.
"Their injuries are not believed to be serious at this time," a police spokeswoman said.
The bonfires preceded Monday’s pro-British Orange Order annual marches which mark the culmination of a season of parades by Protestants.
This year’s marches are the first since Belfast took control of Northern Ireland’s policing and justice matters from London and will be watched for the handling of any further unrest.
A 1998 peace agreement largely ended three decades of violence between predominantly Catholic groups who want a united Ireland and mainly Protestant unionists who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom.
The main paramilitary organizations on both sides, such as the Provisional IRA, have surrendered their weapons, but militant splinter groups have stepped up attacks recently.
Dissidents have attacked security forces several times, with the Real IRA believed to be leading much of the campaign including car bombings and shooting at police officers. On Saturday a bomb destroyed a bridge in Northern Ireland in an attack police said was targeted at its officers.
SPLINTER GROUP BLAMED
Independent police watchdog the Northern Ireland Policing Board said the latest violence was again directed at police.
As the unrest started shortly before midnight, crowds of up to 200 people threw petrol bombs and other objects. A car and rubbish skips were burned and a traffic light was knocked down in the southwest Broadway area and broken bricks lay scattered.
Local media said some of the violence started as police tried to separate people gathering in the Irish nationalist Broadway area of the city from those attending bonfires nearby.
"I can’t recall a night as bad as this for a long, long time," said Billie Dawson, a former Orange Order leader in Belfast.
Separately, police said a car hit a group of people watching a bonfire, injuring seven, including two young children. Their injuries were not life threatening, police said.
A member of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, Jimmy Spratt, who also sits on the Policing Board, said a man "drove his car straight through the crowd injuring several people including a person in a wheelchair."
Sinn Fein, the Provisional IRA’s former political ally which now shares power with the DUP, blamed the dissident Continuity IRA group for orchestrating the violence.
"People who live in (the affected) Broadway and North Belfast areas are totally opposed to what these criminal gangs are doing," Gerry Kelly, a Sinn Fein junior minister in the province’s executive, told Reuters.
Thousands of Protestant Orange Order marchers, wearing orange sashes and some black bowler hats, marched under bright banners on Monday to the sound of drums and pipes to mark the 1690 defeat in battle of Catholic King James II by the Protestant William of Orange.
They regard the parades as an expression of cultural identity. Many Catholics see them as provocative.
"We all have been expecting these parades to pass off quietly compared to previous years, but then you get violence like last night and you wonder whether that will be possible," said spectator Brian Marshall as he watched marchers go by.