Loyalist mob disrupts grave service

Up to 200 loyalist protesters disrupted a Catholic church service at a cemetery on the outskirts of Belfast today.

The mob, some of who were waving placards and blowing horns and whistles, gathered at the Catholic Blessing of the Graves service at Carnmoney Cemetery in Newtownabbey.

After the protest broke up, another mob of around 40 people gathered and threw bricks and stones on the nearby O’Neill Road.

Youths later hijacked two vehicles and set them alight at Doonbeg Drive in the nearby loyalist Rathcoole Estate, completely blocking the O’Neill Road.

One man was arrested for disorderly behaviour, a police spokeswoman said.

Trouble was feared at the service after Catholic graves were damaged in the cemetery earlier this week.

Five Celtic cross tombstones were broken or knocked down when vandals attacked graves early on Monday.

More than 20 memorials at Catholic graves in the cemetery were vandalised in June. Crosses were smashed and headstones overturned in an attack blamed on loyalists.

The cemetery is beside Rathcoole estate, a loyalist housing estate where Catholic postman Daniel McColgan, 20, was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries of the Ulster Defence Association, as he arrived for work in January 2002.

His grave in Carnmoney was damaged in a similar attack the following May.