A long-term strategy needs to be developed to end retaliatory violence in sectarian flashpoint areas of north Belfast, community leaders have been urged.
Following the latest eruption of violence in Ardoyne, Sinn Féin councillor Margaret McClenaghan denounced a spate of attacks on Catholic and Protestant homes by loyalists and nationalists.
Paint bombs were thrown by youths at several nationalist homes in the Alliance Avenue and Ardoyne Road area at 11am yesterday. This followed six attacks in north Belfast on Tuesday night, with the home of 82-year- old cancer sufferer John Mussen and his wife in the loyalist Hesketh Road also targeted by nationalist paint-bombers.
A house in Skegoneill Avenue was also targeted with a petrol bomb with a firework attached to it, shortly before 11pm , but it failed to ignite. Half an hour earlier, a paint bomb struck a house and a car was set alight in Somerdale Park.
Ms McClenaghan said the attacks needed to come to an immediate end. "All these attacks are based purely on sectarianism," she said. "They are wrong and have no justification whatsoever, whatever side of the community they emanate from.
"We need to see a long-term interface strategy developed and implemented by all relevant parties in order to resolve the long- running issues of interface tensions."
Belfast's SDLP deputy lord mayor Pat Convery feared the latest attacks showed violence on both sides was being co-ordinated. "Sporadic and supposedly spontaneous rioting by children and young people is bad enough, but I fear it is being stepped up if petrol and paint bombs are being systematically prepared and specific houses targeted." - ( PA)