"Fiercest rioting" in Belfast for years

Serious rioting is continuing in north Belfast after Orangemen returned from their annual twelfth of July parades.

Police in full riot gear have been attacked by nationalists with petrol bombs and missiles.

They are responding with plastic bullets and water cannon.

In what one police source has described as the "fiercest rioting he has ever seen" in Belfast, 48 police officers have been injured.

According to the RUC, 19 of them are in hospital.

The RUC have fired 25 baton rounds and that number is likely to rise.

Five vehicles have been hijacked and the police say some of these vehicles have been driven at police lines.

The situation flared on the Ardoyne Road, the road where there was trouble recently over the schoolchildren not being able to get to school because of loyalist interference.