We were warned that sooner or later somebody would be killed in north Belfast and eventually those fears were realised. Glen Branagh, from the loyalist Tiger's Bay, will be buried today. He was due to celebrate his 17th birthday tomorrow.
Mr Branagh was known to his friends as "Spacer". He had just started a training course to become a storeman. He was also a member of the Ulster Young Militants, the UDA's youth wing. On Sunday he was one of around 400 youths rioting along the North Queen Street/Duncairn Gardens peace-line.
Nationalists say the trouble started when a group of drunken loyalists, commemorating the Battle of the Somme, came out of a pub. Loyalists say they were attacked first. Mr Branagh was seen running through the crowd, wearing a mask and preparing to throw a pipe bomb when it exploded, killing him.
UDA flags and flowers hang from the lamp-post where he died. A big turnout is expected at his funeral. There were 66 sympathy notices in the Belfast Telegraph. "You will be sadly missed but never forgotten. We respect your commitment to loyalism," says a poster erected on the streets by the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).
Twenty-four PSNI officers, two soldiers, and several civilians, including two children, were hurt in Sunday's rioting. The children were injured by plastic bullets fired by the security forces. Patricia Kelly (14) collapsed after she was wounded in the stomach in the nationalist New Lodge Road.
North Belfast has been boiling over since the summer. There has been rioting at least every week and sometimes every night. From June 1st to November 11th, there have been 224 petrol bombings, 58 pipe bomb incidents, and 50 blast bomb incidents, according to police statistics.
A total of 371 police officers, eight British soldiers, and 103 civilians have been injured. Loyalist sources admit the UDA and, to a lesser extent, the LVF, is behind much of the trouble. "Some of it is spontaneous," says a source. "The low-level stuff, like kids throwing stones across the peace-line isn't organised but there is heavy UDA involvement in the more serious trouble."
The UDA appears keen to provoke the Provisional IRA back into conflict. So far, it has failed. There is a general consensus among nationalists that the Provisionals have not attempted to organise republican resistance.
Local SDLP Assembly member, Mr Alban Maginnis, says: "I have long been an outspoken critic of the IRA and while it has at times manipulated the situation, it is not orchestrating any violence from the nationalist side."
In Ardoyne, the dispute at Holy Cross school is now in its 11th week and there is no sign of an end to the protest. It takes 400 PSNI officers to ensure the children reach school safely, at a cost of £100,000 a day.
Political and community leaders on both sides acknowledge the dispute provides invaluable propaganda for Sinn FΘin and the Provisional IRA and is a PR disaster for loyalists. "The sooner this is over, the better for us all. It is certainly not serving the loyalist cause," one unionist politician says.
"Why are the loyalists so stupid? Can't they see abusing children is a no-win situation?" says a nationalist community worker. Loyalist sources say the difficulty is finding a way of ensuring the protesters end their action without losing face.
Local DUP MP, Mr Nigel Dodds, says working-class Protestant communities across the North are angry and demoralised at the political situation. But the sectarian geography of his constituency - with Catholic and Protestant communities living cheek-by-jowl - means this feeling manifests itself violently in north Belfast more than in other areas.
"Since the IRA cease-fire and particularly since the Belfast Agreement, Protestants have watched the rise of Sinn FΘin and they feel all the concessions are to republicans," he says.
He says north Belfast Protestants also feel threatened by an expanding Catholic population. "Those with enough money move to the suburbs. It is those who can't afford it who are left behind."
He points to the lack of a community infrastructure among Protestants to deal with social and economic problems and suggests a unionist conference to tackle it.
Mr Alban Maginnis agrees: "They [Protestants] believe they lost out with the Good Friday agreement. They have seen the Protestant middle-class disappear.
"They have seen their job security disappear. Now they see their sense of territorial control of the area disappearing too. Everything they regarded as secure has become uncertain. Certainly, there is sectarianism on the Catholic side but the hatred is worse among Protestants."