Police attacked as protests intensify in Northern Ireland

On Monday loyalists, angered over the removal of the British flag from Belfast City Hall, protested, throwing rocks, fireworks, and in one case a homemade bomb, at police.

|
Cathal McNaughton/Reuters
A hijacked car burns in the Newtownards road area of East Belfast December 8. Police officers have been injured in Northern Ireland in riots, which followed several nights of violence, provoked by a decision to remove the British flag from Belfast City Hall.

Police were attacked in Belfast on Monday night by loyalists enraged by a decision to remove the British flag from Belfast City Hall, which has sparked eight consecutive days of protests.

About 15 masked men broke out of a crowd assembled in the predominantly Protestant Newtownards Road area, smashed the windows of a police car and threw a petrol bomb into it while an officer was still inside, police said.

The officer escaped unharmed but the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said they were treating the attack as attempted murder.

The attack was one of a series of protests across the city on Monday during which stones and fireworks were hurled at police, who responded with water cannon in at least two locations.

Loyalists have been protesting against a decision by Irish nationalist city councillors from Sinn Fein and the SDLP to take down the flag which had flown above the provincial capital's city hall every day since it opened in 1906.

The decision by councillors means Britain's 'Union Jack' flag will now fly on 17 days during the year, as is the case at the provincial assembly at Stormont in the British-controlled province.

"This was a planned attempt to kill a police officer which also put the lives of the public in danger," Assistant Chief Constable George Hamilton said.

The attack happened outside the constituency office of Naomi Long, a member of the British parliament for the non-sectarian centrist Alliance party.

Long was forced to flee her home last week after receiving threats over her party's support of the removal of the flag from City Hall.

Later on Monday night, police separated rival loyalist and republican crowds rioting in a flashpoint area between the loyalist east Belfast and the small nationalist Short Strand enclave.

Violence has raged for seven of the last eight days since the decision, in Belfast and around the and nearly 30 officers have been injured.

About 10 people have appeared in court charged with offences linked to the rioting - the youngest just 13 years of age.

Violence between the province's mainly Catholic republicans and pro-British Protestants, which raged on and off for three decades, has largely ended since a peace agreement was signed in 1998, but much of Belfast remains divided along sectarian lines.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Police attacked as protests intensify in Northern Ireland
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Latest-News-Wires/2012/1210/Police-attacked-as-protests-intensify-in-Northern-Ireland
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe