McGuinness condemns attacks on school

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, said today that the attack on a Catholic girls school in North Belfast has brought people to the point of despair.

Stormont Education Minister, Martin McGuinness, was visiting the Ardoyne area where a fresh outbreak of sectarian violence has taken place, leading to the closure of Holy Cross Primary School.

Minister McGuinness said: "Everybody concerned with the education of our children has to be appalled and disgusted by this unacceptable deterioration of the situation".

The DUP had blamed Sinn Fein for last night’s riots in north Belfast, claiming they were designed to provoke a Protestant reaction.

The party’s councillor for the area, Nelson McCauseland, said: "I think Gerry Adams’ junket to Cuba drew widespread criticism, there was fresh revelations about IRA connections with the drug-dealing terrorists in Colombia and I think that the trouble in Ardoyne over the past 24 hours was designed to provoke a Protestant reaction and deflect attention away from Sinn Fein’s foreign misdemeanours."

The police, on the other hand, said the rioting was spontaneous, but paramilitaries from both sides of the sectarian divide were involved.