'Death on streets' warning after bomb injures girls

There will be death on the streets if the sectarian violence in north Belfast does not end, an Ulster Assembly member warned today.

Alban Maginness (SDLP) was speaking after two young Catholic girls were injured in a loyalist blast bomb attack.

An eight-year-old suffered a shrapnel wound to her back and an 11-year-old was treated for shock following an explosion in Newington Street.

‘‘Inevitably somebody is going to be killed or very, very seriously injured if this doesn’t stop.

‘‘What we saw last night was a very, very serious escalation of the violence,’’ Mr Maginness said.

He said the continuing political uncertainty in Northern Ireland, with the imminent collapse of the Stormont institutions, was leading to instability on the streets.

‘‘If politicians do not resolve the macro-political problems and end the political uncertainty and create stability here within Northern Ireland, these type of sectarian clashes are going to continue.’’

A sister of one of the girls said children were out playing in the street when the device hit a roof and exploded in mid-air.

‘‘My 11-year-old sister and her eight-year-old friend ran towards my mum’s house. As they did, a second device came over and hit my sister in the chest.’’

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.

Later, the occupant of a house in Glenside Parade in the Ballysillan area was taken to hospital suffering from cuts after shots were fired through the living room window.

Rioting continued into the night in the Limestone Road and Halliday’s Road area. There were reports of a blast bomb being thrown at police. It failed to explode.

Army bomb experts defused an unexploded pipe bomb found on a footpath on the Whitewell Road.

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 and to keep them apart.

There were no early reports of police casualties.

Meanwhile the DUP MP for North Belfast, Nigel Dodds, accused the IRA of being behind the gun attack and called on John Reid to declare its 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.