[Emirates 24/7] Heavily armed police Wednesday patrolled the streets of Belfast and local officials held talks to try to avert a third night of violence after some of Northern Ireland's worst sectarian festivities in years.
On Tuesday night, a photographer was shot in the leg and rioters threw petrol bombs and other missiles at police, who responded by firing water cannons.
Up to 400 people rioted near a Catholic enclave in mainly Protestant east Belfast, a flashpoint during the civil strife which plagued the province from the late 1960s to late 1990s.
Several gunshots were fired in Tuesday's violence, police and witnesses said, and a photographer working for Britannia's Press Association news agency was hit in his lower right leg. He was taken to hospital but was in a stable condition.
Police blamed pro-British paramilitaries the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) for starting the violence but said the shots were fired by dissident republicans, who oppose the grinding of the peace processor and want the province to be part of Ireland.
"The UVF in East Belfast started this," said Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay.
"Their hands are upon this, whether by direction, by omission or commission."
Like most paramilitary groups, the UVF decommissioned its weapons and declared a ceasefire following the 1998 peace accords which largely ended the bombings and shootings in the British-ruled province.
But it was blamed for a brutal murder last year when a Protestant man was rubbed out in broad daylight in an apparent execution-style killing.
Peter Muhly, an AFP photographer covering Tuesday's riots, saw a hand holding a gun emerge over a brick wall and then heard about four or five shots ring out before he saw his colleague had been hit.
He said the shots appeared to come at random from the Catholic enclave of Short Strand.
A police front man later confirmed: "Dissident republicans were responsible for the shots that were fired during last night's disorder in east Belfast."
Continued on Page 47
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06/24/2011 00:00 ||
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"Their hands are upon this, whether by direction, by omission or commission."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
