![]() Ceasefire doomed in riot-hit N Ireland David Sharrock, Belfast 14sep05 BELFAST is a city in chaos as security alerts, loyalist riots and public fears about resurgent violence combine to turn the clock back 10 years to when terrorism reduced the divided city to the level of a ghost town. Businesses closed early and residents kept off the streets as Protestant hardliners blocked roads in the lead-up to a third night of conflict with police and British troops. An announcement by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain that the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force has abandoned its ceasefire is imminent. The move will ratchet up tensions, but Mr Hain has all but admitted it is inevitable after the worst violence in years hit the provincial capital at the weekend. Women and children joined the mobs blockading Belfast, and the main train station was evacuated because of a hoax bomb warning, while mobile telephone networks virtually collapsed. A 15-year-old boy was among six accused rioters to appear in Belfast Magistrates Court on Monday, and 13 more arrests were made during the day in the east of the city, where 700 loyalist demonstrators clashed with police on Sunday night. Hijacked cars were set on fire and crashed into police stations, which also came under petrol bomb attack. But, unlike Saturday's violence, there were no reports of gun attacks. Shops, a bank and the offices of the hardline Democratic Unionist Party were burnt out at Cloughfern, in North Belfast, where teenage girls joined the rioting. After a weekend of violence, Belfast commuters found burnt-out, hijacked vehicles blocking their way to work and traffic lights destroyed, causing traffic jams that lasted hours. Senior police have been studying hours of closed-circuit television footage in an effort to identify the thugs who plotted and led the rioting. Northern Ireland police chief Hugh Orde, who has pledged to bring the perpetrators to trial, repeated his charge that the Protestant Orange Order bore heavy responsibility for the violence. He said the organisation's call for street protests over the rerouting of an Orange parade to avoid nationalist areas had made the violence "inevitable and predictable". The Orange Order refused to make any official comment or give interviews on Monday, but a senior officer of the organisation tracked down by the BBC refused to condemn the violence and blamed Mr Hain, Sir Hugh and the Parades Commission for what happened. After being briefed by Sir Hugh on the violence that left at least 50 police officers injured, Mr Hain confirmed he was set to announce his course of action. "The evidence I have seen this morning is absolutely clear-cut," he said yesterday. "I will be making an announcement in the next few days." Mr Hain refused to say if that would involve declaring the ceasefires of the UVF and the other main loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association, to be in tatters, but he said detailed legal issues were being examined. Nelson McCausland, a member of the Orange Order and a DUP councillor, who took part in Saturday's rerouted march, said Mr Hain and Sir Hugh had failed to listen to warnings from Unionist political leaders. "I think the violence is an expression of a much deeper resentment and anger that exists right across Northern Ireland," he said. "In areas where you have a paramilitary presence, it will express itself in violence." The Times, AP
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