40 police injured in Belfast riot

Forty police officers were injured in Belfast early Friday while trying to break up a riot by an angry group of Protestants.

A burned bus blocks the road in a Protestant area of North Belfast, Northern Ireland, Friday, Aug. 5. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)

• INDEPTH: Northern Ireland

The rioting began late Thursday night and lasted five hours.

None of the police injuries was said to be life-threatening, although gasoline bombs and at least one homemade grenade were thrown at the officers.

"We had so many petrol bombs thrown at our lines, we stopped counting," Assistant police Chief Constable Wesley Wilson told the Associated Press in Belfast.

No arrests had been made by Friday morning, but police said they were reviewing video taken of the riot to try to identify suspects.

The mob was reportedly angry with police for raiding 15 homes of paramilitary members a few hours earlier. Six men were arrested.

Police said the raids were aimed at stopping a feud among Protestant groups that has left three men dead in the last month.

Protestant march curtailed

Also on Friday in Northern Ireland, government officials said next month's annual march by the Apprentice Boys, a Protestant organization formed in the 1850s, could not go through the Ardoyne area of Belfast.

Ardoyne is a predominantly Catholic area and the government's Parades Commission said a Protestant march there would have "an adverse effect on fragile community relations."

The march, which is held on the nearest Saturday to Aug.12, attracts Protestants from all over Northern Ireland.