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Sunday, Sep 11, 2005
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Posted on Sun, Sep. 11, 2005

Riot ensues in Belfast over restricted parade




ASSOCIATED PRESS

Protestant extremists threw homemade grenades Saturday and seven police and two civilians were wounded in the latest fury over a restricted Belfast parade.

Protestants clashed with police, British troops and Catholic crowds in several parts of Belfast after authorities blocked the Orange Order -- the territory's major Protestant brotherhood -- from parading past the hard-line Catholic end of disputed Springfield Road.

At least three officers were injured by flames and shrapnel from homemade grenades and gasoline-filled bottles on the nearby North Circular Road. Four other officers in separate incidents across the city.

Officers on the North Circular Road took cover behind their armored vehicles after hearing bursts of automatic gunfire, although nobody was reported hit by bullets.

Later, riot police equipped with body armor, shields and flame-retardant boiler suits repelled the attackers with plastic bullets and mobile water cannons.

The rioting continued for several hours, spreading after nightfall to Ballyclare and Newtownabbey, two predominantly Protestant suburbs of Belfast.

On the Shankill Road, more than 1,000 people faced police, who responded with plastic bullet volleys and water jets. At least two civilians also were injured.

Protestant mobs also blocked several key roads to protest the authorities' decision to bar Orangemen from marching on most of the Springfield Road, a predominantly Catholic area with one isolated Protestant section.

Police instead forced the Orangemen to march through a derelict industrial site to their Orange lodge, which overlooks the road.

Each summer, Northern Ireland endures inflamed tensions because of mass demonstrations by the Orange Order, an organization instrumental in founding Northern Ireland as a predominantly Protestant state 85 years ago.

Over the past decade, Catholic hard-liners led by Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party, have violently opposed Orange parades that traditionally passed near or through Catholic areas.

Northern Ireland's so-called "marching season" this year last turned violent on July 12, when several hundred Catholics attacked police with grenades, gasoline bombs and other weapons after an Orange parade passed the IRA power base of Ardoyne in north Belfast. About 100 officers and 10 civilians were wounded.


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