Sporadic street violence by loyalists

There were road blockages and some violent incidents in loyalist areas in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland last night.

There were road blockages and some violent incidents in loyalist areas in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland last night.

In Belfast, about 50 youths threw bottles and stones at the RUC in Hope Street, between the loyalist Sandy Row area and Great Victoria Street. They erected barricades of wooden pallets and blocked the road for a time. The RUC fired a number of plastic bullets.

Petrol-bombs were thrown at the RUC on the Lower Ormeau Road. The police returned fire with plastic bullets. Burning barricades blocked roads in Glen gormley.

At Lansdowne Road in north Belfast burning cars blocked the road. In south Belfast a car was set alight at the junction of Tate's Avenue and the Lisburn Road, where women and children had earlier held a street protest.

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There were a number of hijackings and burning cars blocked roads in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, while cars were pulled across a road at nearby Greenisland.

Roads were also blocked in Ballymena, Coleraine and Lisburn. At Greyabbey, on the Ards peninsula, about 300 Orangemen picketed the local RUC station and then delivered a letter of protest to the home of Mr Billy Martin, a member of the Parades Commission.

Earlier, there had been sporadic loyalist street protests in Belfast. During the evening, protest groups made up mostly of women and children blocked six streets in east and south Belfast. A loyalist women's camp had been set up on the verge of the Hollywood Road on Saturday afternoon and protesters from it blocked the road intermittently during the day. About 80 women and children blocked the Newtownards Road.

"We decided to come out in support of our husbands and brethren down at Drumcree and in support of their right to walk", said one woman. "What has Mo Mowlam to offer the British people of Ulster? Who are the Parades Commission to eradicate Protestant culture and heritage?"

Asked why there were so few men present, another woman said: "Half the men are at Drumcree and the other half are waiting to do other things."

The Sinn Fein Assembly member for North Belfast, Mr Gerry Kelly, said that residents in Rosapenna Street had foiled two attacks on a Catholic family. The attackers had broken two windows in trying to gain access to the family's home by using a ladder to climb the "peace wall" separating Catholic and Protestant areas.

He said that two pensioners had to be evacuated from their home in Victoria Gardens, off the Cavehill Road, after it was petrol-bombed.