Gunmen Open Fire in Belfast
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - Gunmen opened fire on police and Protestant homes from a Catholic neighborhood Monday, and residents said their homes were attacked with homemade grenades as sectarian passions flared in north Belfast.
There were no reports of injuries in the exchange - the latest in months of violence that the police commander responsible for suppressing Catholic-Protestant clashes in the most polarized pockets of north Belfast said was the worst he had seen in 20 years.
Police said eight assault-rifle rounds were fired from Hallidays Road, a Catholic neighborhood beside Duncairn Gardens, where militant Protestants live. Police said they suspected members of the Irish Republican Army.
Later, police reported another burst of about 25 bullets fired from the Catholic side toward the Protestant houses. They were also investigating reports that three pipe bombs or grenades had detonated in the back yards of Catholic homes.
The violence followed rioting Sunday night by rival mobs in the no man's land between the two districts. Gunmen police suspect were members of the Ulster Defense Association, an outlawed Protestant group, opened fire from Duncairn Gardens on Catholic crowds. A Catholic woman said she was shot in the leg, but she was not hospitalized.
Police on Monday recovered the remains of five exploded pipe bombs and three explosive devices that did not detonate. Another outlawed Protestant group, the Red Hand Defenders, claimed responsibility for setting off the devices. The Red Hand Defenders is a cover name for members of the UDA who don't want to stick to their group's 1994 cease-fire.
Catholics in Hallidays Road insisted that the UDA had started the latest spasm of violence. They said a 200-strong Protestant mob had smashed windows in their homes Sunday, and they accused police of doing little or nothing to stop them.
But police said they were being targeted by both sides. And Protestant homes were also attacked Sunday night in the nearby Crumlin Road district. Around 100 Protestants, mostly women, blocked the road Monday to protest what they said were recurring attacks on their homes by stone-throwing Catholic youths, but police blocked them from marching toward Catholic homes in Ardoyne, north Belfast's premier power base for the IRA.
Both sides of the community blame each other for starting and stoking sporadic rioting that began in June. Tensions have risen because of ongoing Protestant efforts to block Catholics from the front door of a Catholic elementary school, as well as July's traditional Protestant parades.
This week's violence coincides with a rising political crisis over the refusal of the IRA, the UDA and other outlawed groups to disarm in line with the province's 1998 peace accord. The issue threatens to topple Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant government within weeks.
Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan, who coordinates police deployments in north Belfast, said the last four months of violence in north Belfast ``is far worse than anything we have seen for many, many years.''
He said some of the unrest in the area this summer was the worst in Belfast since unrest involving an IRA-led prison protest left 10 prisoners dead and more than 100 other people dead in 1981.
More than 300 police and dozens of civilians were injured in riots this summer. Two Protestant teen-agers were killed - one run over by an enraged Catholic motorist, the other shot when anti-Catholic extremists fired at a crowd of people they presumed were all Catholics.
Originally published September 24, 2001.
