Up to 200 loyalists and nationalists threw bricks and bottles at each other across houses and an army barricade in north Belfast yesterday evening. The trouble flared on the Ardoyne Road, where earlier the ongoing protest at Holy Cross Primary School had passed off peacefully.
Windows in at least four houses were broken during the disturbances but there were no arrests and no reported injuries. It is not clear what led to the violence, which erupted shortly before 4.30 p.m.
A local Sinn FΘin councillor, Mr Gerard Brophy, accused loyalists of blockading the Crumlin Road, "trapping a number of parents and children in three Catholic schools in the area".
On Tuesday, the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by the loyalist UDA and LVF paramilitary organisations, threatened to take "military action" against parents who accompanied their children to Holy Cross School.
Two people, believed to be members of a dissident republican paramilitary group, have been arrested following an arms find in the North.
The RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said he believed those detained had been in possession of a sub-machinegun.
The arrests took place on the Moira interchange of the M1 motorway yesterday afternoon. A motorway slip road was closed during the security operation.
"We would believe, although it is very early stages, that these people are dissident republicans", the Chief Constable told a BBC reporter.