16 soldiers injured in sectarian street fights

SIXTEEN soldiers were injured during overnight sectarian street clashes in flashpoint east Belfast.

The army fired 17 baton rounds to quell disturbances along a bitterly-divided peaceline in the city.

Security forces came under attack from stones and fireworks as rival Catholic and Protestant mobs clashed again in the area.

There were reports of four pipe bombs being hurled into the nationalist Clandeboye Drive.

Loyalist homes across the interface in Cluan Place also came under attack from blast bombs, it was claimed.

Officers recovered fragments of what was believed to have been an exploded pipe bomb close to the interface at Clandeboye Drive.

The wife of a unionist councillor, in the area to record attacks, was hit on the head by a caustic substance and treated by soldiers.

A Police Service of Northern Ireland spokeswoman confirmed 16 soldiers had been wounded, a number of whom were taken to hospital.

Both sides blamed the other for the trouble.

Ulster Unionist Assembly member Sir Reg Empey, a minister in the Stormont Government, said closed circuit TV cameras were needed urgently.

“I have been on to the Northern Ireland Office. I have been pleading with them for days for the erection of cameras,” he said.

The trouble came hours after Ulster Unionist leader and Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble visited the area and went on to talks with Police Service acting chief constable Colin Cramphorn about the continuing sectarian violence in east Belfast and in the north of the city.

Mr Trimble had been advised against crossing the peaceline into the Short Strand on security grounds.

Sinn Féin councillor Joe O’Donnell accused Mr Trimble of treating Catholic residents like “second class citizens”. He claimed unionist politicians should shoulder some of the blame for failing to enter into talks to defuse the tensions.

“Would you not be angry if people were bombing your house, if people were burning your houses down and continuously for four months and nothing done to prevent it?” Mr O’Donnell said. “Of course people are angry. They have been angry for a very long time and I don’t blame them, I agree with them.”

Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan, leader of the SDLP, had separate talks with trade unionists about the situation.

It emerged last night that Security Minister Jane Kennedy had a close-up view of the interface in east Belfast when she went on patrol with police during trouble on Tuesday night.

The minister, who pledged to return soon for talks with local community representatives, praised the police for their efforts to keep the rival factions apart.

She said: “Once again, my overwhelming feeling is of admiration and gratitude to the police who are asked on a nightly basis to put themselves in situations of great danger to protect the very areas from which attacks on them are launched.”