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Rioters wound 30 in Belfast
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By Brian Lavery The New York Times
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2005
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DUBLIN Protestant mobs rioted Sunday for a second consecutive night in Belfast and in towns on the city's outskirts, seriously wounding at least 30 police officers, in Northern Ireland's worst violence in seven years.
Crowds of men wearing masks or hooded sweatshirts pulled over their faces terrorized citizens and attacked security forces. Cars were set on fire, closing a highway into Belfast. The more than 2,000 police officers and British soldiers at the scene were bombarded with homemade explosives and bottles of flaming gasoline while they held rioters back at major intersections.
The disturbances began Saturday after the government banned a parade by the Orange Order, a Protestant men's organization, from passing through a Roman Catholic neighborhood in Belfast. The organization, which holds hundreds of parades during the summer, called for its supporters to protest. At least 1,000 Protestants, mostly paramilitaries and teenagers, took to the streets.
Hugh Orde, Northern Ireland's chief constable, said the clashes posed "one of the most dangerous riot situations in the history of policing in the United Kingdom," especially because Protestant paramilitaries attacked the police with automatic weapons. One policeman was shot in the eye and partly blinded.
In Bangor, rioters hijacked a bus, robbed and ejected its passengers, drove it to Belfast and set it alight. In another town, they used a stolen backhoe to knock down streetlights and tear an ATM from a wall. In Belfast, they rammed a police station's gates with a stolen car. The police arrested at least 10 people.
Sectarian tensions have repeatedly flared up since July, despite hopes that such violence would subside after the Irish Republican Army's announcement of an end to its armed campaign against Britain.
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