Protestants riot in Northern Ireland for 3rd day
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-13 09:59

Crowds of Protestant hard-liners blocked key roads in Belfast and rioted for a third straight night Monday in a long-building explosion of frustration at Northern Ireland's peace process.

At least 50 officers were wounded over the weekend when extremists fought riot police and British troops in the worst Protestant violence in a decade. The British governor and the territory's police chief said two outlawed Protestant paramilitary groups mounted machine-gun and grenade attacks on police.

The rampage followed British authorities' refusal Saturday to permit the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood, to parade as it usually does each year along the boundary of Catholic west Belfast.

A Protestant youth passes a burning bus in north Belfast, Northern Ireland Monday Sept 12, 2005. [AP]

Monday's road blockades, formed by men, women and children, caused traffic jams that lasted for hours. Adding to the chaos were troublemakers who called Belfast businesses and, pretending to be police officers, ordered them to send workers home and close early on security grounds.

Protestant riots resumed at nightfall Monday in several parts of Belfast, although the mobs were smaller, the level of destruction much less severe and the intensity of violence greatly reduced from the weekend. No new injuries were reported.

Protestants threw fire bombs at a heavily fortified police base on the line between British Protestant and Irish Catholic turf in west Belfast. Gangs pelted passing cars on the city's two major highways with stones, forcing police to divert traffic to smaller roads.

Gangs also hijacked and burned more vehicles on the Crumlin Road in north Belfast, although police prevented the hijacking of a bus and seized crates of Molotov cocktails and paint-filled balloons.

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