Landrovers used to take students home

Police landrovers have been used to escort pupils from the Boys Model School on the Crumlin road in Belfast due to violence in the area. Fourteen landrovers gathered outside the school to take the students home from school.

Earlier today a gang of loyalists vandalised 17 cars in the grounds of a Catholic secondary school in north Belfast. Four men, two of them armed, arrived at the Our Lady of Mercy school in the mainly loyalist Ballysillam area shortly after 11am. The armed men stood guard outside while the others smashed doors and windscreens on a total of 17 vehicles. Nobody was injured in the incident.

The attack follows a night of rioting around the Holy Cross Catholic primary school just half a mile away in Ardoyne. That school was the scene of a four-month blockade last year by loyalists who objected to Catholics bringing their children to class through a predominantly Protestant area.