Clashes erupt in Belfast, 56 police injured

Dozens of police officers and two civilians were injured during Friday night clashes in central Belfast, authorities said Saturday. The violence was the latest flare-up in tensions between Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic communities.

Most of the 56 police injuries were minor, but four officers were taken to local hospitals after the relatively large-scale clashes, during which police fired plastic bullets and water cannons after being pelted with missiles for a second successive night.

Belfast remains divided between Protestants who are in support of British control of Northern Ireland and Catholics who generally favor unification with Ireland, despite a 1998 peace and power-sharing deal that put an end to the worst of "The Troubles" in the British province.

On Friday evening along the city's main thoroughfare, Royal Avenue, Protestants tried to block a march by the nationalist side of the community. When police moved in to clear them, they threw bricks, bottles and fireworks.

Burnt-out cars and rubble littered the city center and shop fronts were damaged. Police said seven people were arrested.

"It was sheer thuggery," said Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton, who commanded Friday night's police operation.

"There were all sorts of weapons and equipment being used against the police including scaffolding and masonry. People were pulling up the paving stones from the busiest shopping precinct in Belfast."

This year's unusually intense violence reflects rising working-class Protestant anger at Irish Catholic gains from the peace process.

"We got to a stage now where working class Protestants, loyalists, or whatever you want to describe them as, feel like white trash," said Billy Hutchinson, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which draws its main support from loyalist working-class communities. "I think they don't believe that they live in a city of equals, a Northern Ireland of equals and I think that it needs to stop."  

Gerry Kelly, a member of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican party, which has been linked to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), condemned the violence and said it was "orchestrated and the people who orchestrated it need to come out and talk about it."

The Catholic, or nationalist parade, was held to mark the anniversary of the 1971 introduction of imprisonment without trial by British authorities. The parade eventually had to pass along a different route.

Eight people were hurt Thursday night when a crowd at a bonfire to mark the anniversary in a Catholic-dominated part of Belfast threw paint bombs, bottles and masonry at police.

Forty-two years ago, soldiers swept into Catholic districts and arrested more than 340 people as the British government sought to halt growing IRA violence aimed at extinguishing rule from London.

"Last night's violence and attacks on police officers were shameful,"  Theresa Villiers, Britain's minister for Northern Ireland, said in a statement. "Disorder on the streets is a hugely regrettable step backwards."

In all, more than 3,600 people died in a sectarian conflict that began in the late 1960s, including more than 1,000 members of the British security forces. More than 36,000 were injured.

Wire services