Police say injuries caused by orchestrated attack

Seven officers were injured in a sustained and orchestrated nationalist attack on them and on the loyalist Cluan Place area as an Apprentice Boys parade dispersed.

When they tried to move in to prevent the violence, the police say, a crowd of women and children sat in the road to prevent them and a crowd of 200 nationalists threw five petrol bombs and attacked them.

People in the Short Strand tell a different story. They say they were preparing for a children's party tomorrow when drunken loyalists began pelting them with missiles across the peaceline.

When the police responded, say local people, instead of dealing with the loyalists, they battened women and children on the nationalist side of the peaceline.

Ironically, a meeting called to discuss sectarianism was taking place in the area but was curtailed as reports of the violence spread.