Children hurt in sectarian clashes
Two little girls were recovering in hospital today after they were injured in an explosion as sectarian clashes intensified in North Belfast.
An eight-year-old girl suffered a shrapnel wound to her back and an 11-year-old girl was treated for shock following an explosion which police said they believed was caused by some form of blast bomb thrown by loyalists.
Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid branded the loyalists who threw the device at the girls as ‘‘quite simply, scum’’.
An angry Dr Reid added: ‘‘They bring disgrace on all of us in Northern Ireland.
‘‘They need to be captured, prosecuted and locked up where their poisonous sectarian hatred can do no damage.’’
Earlier a man was injured when a gunman opened fire from the nationalist side of the Limestone Road divide.
The victim, a Protestant, was taken to hospital where he underwent emergency surgery for a bullet wound in the chest and was later reported to be in a stable condition.
Condemning the attack in which the girls were injured, the Assistant Chief Constable for Belfast, Alan McQuillan, said: ‘‘We believe at this stage that it was some form of blast device and that it was thrown from the loyalist side towards the nationalists and that the children injured were on the nationalist side.’’
The girls were hurt as rival factions continued to throw fireworks at each other and engaged in sporadic stoning at several spots in north Belfast.
An army bomb disposal team later took away the remains of a blast device for examination.
Earlier they defused an unexploded pipe bomb and made safe a large firework with shrapnel packed around it found in the area.
At the height of the trouble which started during the afternoon and continued into the night, some 100 nationalists and 50 loyalists were involved at several flash-points.
Police in full riot gear were called in to separate the factions. There were no early reports of police casualties.
Meanwhile the Democratic Unionist Party MP for North Belfast, Nigel Dodds, accused the IRA of being behind the gun attack and called on Ulster Secretary John Reid to declare their ceasefire over - as he did with the loyalist Ulster Defence Association, Ulster Freedom Fighters and Loyalist Volunteer Force last week.
But Mr McQuillan said that while police had found the firing point for the shooting and that it was on the nationalist side, it was too early to say which organisation was responsible.
