Belfast rioters injure 40 police officers

July 14, 2011|Associated Press

A car burned in the background as rioters attacked police in Belfast Tuesday.… (STEPHEN WILSON/AFP/Getty…)

BELFAST - Masked Catholic rioters have injured 40 police officers during two nights of violence that Belfast political and church leaders were powerless to stop, a senior police commander said yesterday as the city cleared away torched cars and street rubble.

Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay said leaders on both the British Protestant and Irish Catholic sides of the community made “huge efforts’’ to prevent riots during Tuesday’s annual marches by the Orange Order, a hard-line Protestant brotherhood.

But he said a hard core of around 250 mostly teenage Catholics were determined to attack the police units that had deployed around Belfast to prevent any direct Catholic-Protestant clashes. The worst flash point was a north Belfast enclave called Ardoyne, where large crowds watched the teens pelt police units for five hours with Molotov cocktails, paving stones, wood planks, even furniture.

Finlay said Ardoyne leaders observed largely peaceful protests against an Orange Order march that passed near the district.

Once the official Ardoyne protests ended, Finlay said, “we really began to get intense violence from the young people that nobody really seemed able to control.’’ Sixteen officers were injured during the Ardoyne clashes, including an officer pictured in flames in yesterday’s morning Belfast papers. Finlay said that officer was back on duty after suffering only minor burns. His head-to-toe flame-retardant boiler suit under his body armor had protected him.

Twenty-four other officers were injured in riots that preceded the Orange Order parades, which Catholics long have tried to block from passing their districts.

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