The North's Police Ombudsman is to be asked to investigate the police's handling of sectarian violence along the peace line in the Short Strand area of east Belfast.
Sinn Féin has said Ms Nuala O'Loan will be approached because police and British soldiers adopted a one-sided approach to serious trouble in the area on Thursday night. Thirteen police officers and several civilians were injured and homes damaged as petrol and blast bombs were thrown.
Security sources have blamed republicans for instigating the violence. In a statement yesterday, a police spokesman said two suspect devices found in Strand Walk were too heavy to have been thrown over the peace wall by loyalists and were hoaxes which "must have been planted locally".
Republicans accused the security forces of lying. Local people said a video they had shot showed their area came under sustained attack from loyalists for six hours. The video was given to two local television stations yesterday.
It will also be forwarded to the British and Irish governments and Ms O'Loan. Streets in the Short Strand were yesterday strewn with debris. Residents said they had been attacked with nuts, bolts, fireworks, glass bombs and pipe bombs.
They showed the media buckets and bin-liners of bolts, nuts, marbles, golf balls and fireworks which they said had been fired at their homes by loyalists. Sinn Féin accused the police of turning a blind eye to loyalist violence.
Local councillor Mr Joe O'Donnell said: "The biggest frustration is that on occasions like this, the police tell us nothing is coming from the loyalist side when we have clear video documentary evidence that this is not the case."
The Sinn Féin chairman, Mr McLaughlin, who visited the area yesterday, said: "The police themselves have a very partisan approach. There appears to be an institutionalised form of an acceptable level of violence so long as it is visited upon the nationalist community." He said loyalist paramilitaries were clearly no longer on ceasefire and were attempting to provoke the Provisional IRA.
Unionist politicians blamed republicans for initiating the trouble. Local DUP MP Mr Peter Robinson said the violence would not stop unless the police seized control of the Short Strand and maintained a permanent presence.
Former Irish rugby international and local Ulster Unionist member, Mr Trevor Ringland, accused Sinn Féin of not telling the truth. "I saw with my own eyes naked sectarian hatred being directed by republicans against their neighbouring Protestant community. Mr O'Donnell is living in fantasy land if he thinks it is all one-way traffic against Catholics."
Local UUP councillor Mr Michael Copeland said nationalists had attacked Protestant homes with petrol bombs and rocks in "attempted ethnic cleansing".
Meanwhile, a prison officer at Maghaberry jail has escaped injury in a gun attack on his home in Larne, Co Antrim. A shotgun blast shattered the front window of the house on Thursday night. Republican and loyalist prisoners at Maghaberry are campaigning to be segregated.
The chairman of the Northern Ireland Prison Officers Association, Mr Finlay Spratt, condemned the attack. He said up to 90 officers at Maghaberry were on sick leave, most because intimidation linked to the segregation demands.