3 policemen hurt in Belfast violence

BELFAST, NOV. 19. Three police officers were injured in north Belfast as violence flared between Catholics and Protestants for the third straight night, police said.

The three officers received head and leg injuries as they attempted to intervene between the rival nationalist Catholic and loyalist Protestant groups on Belfast's limestone road.

The two groups hurled molotov cocktails, bricks, bottles and other missiles, including fireworks, targeting the opposing group and police officers alike, a police spokesman said yesterday.

Several police officers had been injured on Friday in similar violence in north Belfast.

Meanwhile in west Belfast, a firefighter was injured after he and his colleagues came under a hail of missiles from a group of youths after answering a string of hoax fire alarms.

The windows of two fire engines were broken in the ambush attack.

North Belfast has been the scene of intercommunal violence for several months, with Catholics clashing with Protestants who, according to police, were aided by loyalist paramilitaries.

On November 11, a 16-year-old Protestant was killed when a homemade bomb, which he was about to throw, exploded.

Four hundred police have been deployed around the Catholic holy cross primary school in Belfast for the past week, to protect young girls and their parents as they went to and from the school.

- AFP

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : International
Previous : Rugova still ahead in Kosovo race