Protestant mobs attacked police officers with Molotov cocktails and hijacked cars in rioting that ran into early yesterday, but police and other emergency services said the Protestant rage of the past three nights was fading.
"It was very noticeable last night. The tension was greatly reduced," said Chris Kerr, a commander of Belfast's hard-pressed firefighting service, which had crews threatened at gunpoint over the weekend as it tried to douse hundreds of burning cars and buildings.
From 8pm on Monday until 3am yesterday, hundreds of Protestant men and youths continued to menace motorists, block roads with burning vehicles and barrage police units with everything from paint-filled balloons to firecrackers in several parts of Belfast and outlying towns.
Parts of the highway network were closed because youths on overhead pedestrian bridges were trying to drop bricks and boulders on passing cars.
Police said one of its heavily fortified stations on the border between British Protestant and Irish Catholic sections of west Belfast was struck by about 40 gasoline-filled bottles overnight, but suffered only superficial scorching. In street riots nearby, several more police were injured, including one officer who was struck in the head with a brick and knocked unconscious.
In the mostly Protestant suburb of Lisburn, a mob pulled a woman from her car and torched it. Elsewhere, in the east and north of Belfast, police units swooped on rioters as they tried to hijack buses, either arresting or chasing off the gangs. Officers also seized crates of ready-to-use Molotov cocktails and other makeshift weapons before they could be thrown.
Police commander Hugh Orde and the province's British governor, Peter Hain, say members of Northern Ireland's two major outlawed Protestant groups -- the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Defense Association -- were both involved in attacking police with automatic gunfire and grenades. More than 50 officers have been wounded. Hain is expected to announce punitive actions against both paramilitary groups within days.
The rioting began on Saturday when Northern Ireland's main legal Protestant fraternity, the Orange Order, called for Protestants to mount sit-down protests on roads all over Belfast. The group was angry that British authorities had barred an Orange parade from passing along a main road that borders the Catholic section of west Belfast.
The Orangemen, who largely oppose Northern Ireland's decade-old peace process on the grounds that Britain has delivered too many concessions to Catholics, refused to take any responsibility for the rioting that immediately began at many of these illegal protests.
Senior Orange officials in Belfast instead blamed the police, the British government and a civilian panel that ordered Saturday's parade to be rerouted into a derelict factory site.
Police on Monday showed footage from surveillance cameras in which Orangemen, many wearing their order's trademark orange vestments, hurled rocks and other objects at police on Saturday in several parts of Belfast.
Police frequently use such tapes as evidence to prosecute rioters.
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