Violence erupts in Belfast

BBC News ^ | Wednesday, 3 April, 2002, 21:09 GMT 22:09 UK | BBC News

[colette_g]

Violence erupts in Belfast

Police were attacked with low velocity rounds

Police have fired 15 plastic baton rounds after being attacked by a loyalist crowd with gunfire and pipe bombs in north Belfast.

Police said the trouble began at about 2000 GMT on Wednesday when a crowd of about 100 people attacked them with at least five pipe bombs.

Police said they had been attacked by 23 pipe and blast bombs, 30 petrol bombs and that there had been five shooting incidents.

Police said these involved low velocity rounds.

Stones and other missiles were thrown in the disturbances.

Trouble broke out on the Limestone Road. A car was hijacked and set alight in nearby Robina Street in the loyalist Tiger's Bay area.

Until unionists politicians get off their backsides and talk to their constituents and try to put a stop to it, this will continue

Danny Lavery
Sinn Fein

A loyalist crowd gathered at the Halliday's Road junction in the Tiger's Bay area.

Sinn Fein councillor Danny Lavery appealed for calm and said the situation would only be resolved through dialogue.

"Until unionists politicians get off their backsides and talk to their constituents and try to put a stop to it, this will continue," he said.

Serious disturbances

Progressive Unionist Party assembly member Billy Hutchinson blamed what he described as police heavy handedness for the trouble.

Loyalist community worker Eddie McClean said "loyalist dissidents" had entered the Tiger's Bay area to stoke up the trouble.

Police said further rioting had broken out in North Queen Street and Duncairn Gardens.

On Tuesday, there were serious disturbances on the Limestone Road when rival nationalist and loyalist groups clashed.

Petrol bombs were thrown and a number of police officers injured in the violence.

There have been disturbances in north Belfast on an almost daily basis.

[tomahawk]

When will Koffi Annan and the EU demand that Britain withdraw from the occupied territories?

[E=MC²]

Impossible...bill klinton brought permanent peace to Ireland.

[DoughtyOne]

What about occupied Kosovo, Bosnia, Cyprus, Lebanon...

[tomahawk]

And the Basque region of Spain, Corsica being occupied by France, Kurds being occupied by Iraq, Iran and Turkey, Chechnya being occupied by Russia, California, Arizona and New Mexico being occupied by the U.S., Silesia occupied by Poland, etc, etc, etc.

[white trash redneck]

Tsk, tsk. The cycle of violence continues. Shame on the Brits.

[tcostell]

The obviuos problem here is not the UK military. I for one believe that they would rather be rid of the whole N. Ireland problem. The problem is the "loyalist" groups and their "we'll fight anyone to stay British, even the British" attittude.

And naturally, to the media, all trouble in the north is attributed to the IRA, or it just didn't happen. For some time loyalist groups have promoted what amounts to an "ethnic cleansing" agenda often with police complicity, and the media has ignored it.

[tcostell]

My apologies, I promise to get myself a spell checker.

[tom paine 2]

I thought George Mitchell and Clowntoon took care of all that when they got Israel and the Palestinians taken care of

[Moleman]

Crap, just when I thought things had calmed down in the land of my ancestors.
At least we Micks don't blow ourselves up- afterall we'd never make it to the pub!

[JohnPaulJones]

Those Terrorist! Send in the US and Royal Marines and smoke them out of thier caves....

[mountaineer]

bill klinton brought permanent peace to Ireland.

My immediate thought, too - and Hillary visited Dublin just last week to remind them all of how x42 had solved all their problems. oops.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Hillary visited Dublin just last week .....I didn't know that. No doubt she was there to stir up trouble in order to divert Blair's attention from helping President Bush in our war on terror. It is so easy to figure her out.

People should understand. Hillary Clinton IS A TERRORIST.

[Ken H]

This will give the military a chance to try out their new "pub-buster" bomb.

[mountaineer]

Here's a story from the Irish Times about Hillary's visit.

[ambrose]

I thought Clinton had ended violence there.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

"Violence erupts in Belfast"

that's as shocking as the headling: "sun rises in the morning, sets at night."

[kellynla]

The Brits will not leave NI because they know if they do the Scots will demand the same and of course if they give Scotland their independence GB will lose the income of all that North Sea oil. You see it's all about oil. It actually costs more than it receives to stay in NI but it knows if it pulls out the slippery slope will cause them to have to pull out of Scotland too. The Brits don't give a hoot about the Irish in NI they just want to hold on to Scotland and they don't care about the Scots either. Once the North Sea oil drys up they will be glad to give both Nothern Ireland and Scotland their independence.