Affrontements à Belfast – 1 juillet 2011

Sectarian clashes erupt again in east Belfast following Orange Order march

The Guardian

Saturday 2 July 2011

Police battle loyalist march supporters and nationalist residents two weeks after region’s worst violence in years

Violent clashes involving police, loyalist marchers and nationalists residents have broke out on Friday in the same part of east Belfast that was rocked by 48 hours of sectarian rioting and shooting almost a fortnight ago.

Homes in the Catholic Short Strand district were attacked shortly before 11pm, just a few hours after an Orange Order parade passed by the area.

Riot police had to be moved back into the interface between the Short Strand and nearby loyalist districts following an incursion into Mount Pottinger Road by more than a dozen loyalists.

Earlier, the parade which commemorated the Battle of the Somme and involved up to 6,000 Orangemen, loyalist bands and their supporters passed off relatively peacefully. There had been minor skirmishes between teenagers on both sides of the security cordon along Albertbridge Road in the first half of the evening.

The situation had been under control in part due to the presence of former IRA and Sinn Fein figures who, along with the police, had attempted to keep the peace on the sectarian fault-line.

But the trouble escalated later when a group of young loyalists beat up a local man on Mountpottinger Road and attacked a number of houses in the Short Strand.

The violence was not on the same scale as the trouble that exploded on 20 June, which the police blamed on the Ulster Volunteer Force for orchestrating. During 48 hours of unrest a press photographer was wounded during a gun attack by dissident republicans and a number of police officers sustained injuries in clashes with loyalist rioters. Read more…