By Jodie Ginsberg DUBLIN (Reuters) - Riots in Dublin may have been orchestrated weeks in advance by hardcore Irish nationalists, local media suggested on Sunday, but a senior police officer said there had been no indications that violence was planned. In scenes more usually associated with Belfast in Northern Ireland, police fought running battles with hundreds of rioters in central Dublin throughout Saturday afternoon. At least three cars were torched and 14 people were taken to hospital, six of them police officers. Newspapers said ringleaders had co-ordinated the violence on mobile phones and brought petrol to burn cars and rubbish bins. The mob hurled bricks, fireworks and glass bottles at police, forcing the closure of Dublin's main shopping streets. Police said on Sunday 41 people had been arrested. "The mob came well prepared, with many carrying petrol bombs and canisters. Some had been summoned by text messages ... and there are unconfirmed reports that republicans were bussed in from Northern Ireland to take part," The Sunday Times reported. Rioting began around midday as crowds of Irish nationalists gathered to protest against a march due later in the day by relatives of people killed by IRA paramilitaries. But Assistant Police Commissioner Al McHugh said his officers had no indication that riots were planned. "The intelligence that was available to us indicated that nothing of the scale that took place was going to take place," he told state broadcaster RTE. "The parade was hijacked by a number of hoodlums and gangsters who came out of the local pubs who were hell bent on causing damage, who were armed with hammers, petrol bombs." MISSILES Opposition parties suggested the police and City Council had been under prepared and called for an investigation. "Given the publicity that surrounded the march, I am surprised that the gardai seemed ill-prepared to deal with the violence that erupted," said Labour party leader Pat Rabbitte. Others questioned the low-key police presence ahead of the planned relatives' march -- subsequently called off -- and asked why metal fences and paving stones being used for street repairs were left out where rioters could turn them into missiles. Northern Ireland is no stranger to violence but it rarely spills over into the Republic. Some 3,600 people were killed in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s in a conflict that ran along Northern Ireland's national and religious divides. Though the violent "troubles" largely ended with a 1998 peace deal, Northern Ireland's communities remain deeply divided and tensions often flare up into riots. The last time Dublin experienced such violence was in 1981, when hundreds of people attacked the British embassy to support nationalist hunger strikers in a Northern Irish prison.
© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.
|