A lone British army helicopter hovered over Belfast yesterday as it surveyed the streets of east and south Belfast littered with debris from sectarian hand-to-hand fighting and sporadic violence that marked another weekend.
The military presence and the destruction caused by sectarian and paramilitary-backed violence combined to echo an era many had thought was gone.
Shots were fired at police in the lower Ormeau Road area, and gangs from both sides attacked officers in the east of the city. Six people have been shot in recent disturbances so far. Crates of petrol-bombs have been recovered in the Donegall Pass area.
Elsewhere, a Catholic school was targeted by arsonists, while homes were attacked in both Belfast and Co Antrim.
Army engineers worked to raise the so-called peace line at the Short Strand interface with the Albertbridge Road in an effort to block attempts by rival loyalist and republican gangs to lob petrol and blast-bombs at each other.
Terraces of redbrick homes now boarded up amid streets covered with bricks and shattered glass showed that the current four-metre wall was insufficient. A further 3.5-metre screen is being added. The army hoped yesterday that much of the work would be completed by nightfall. But it admits it could be several weeks before the wall is completed.
The fortification comes amid signs of a worsening in community relations elsewhere in Belfast.
High-ranking politicians are involved in a spate of political activity while appeals for calm have been made by senior members from the main churches.
Sinn Féin's Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness are due to meet Mr Tony Blair in Downing Street today, while President George Bush's special adviser, Mr Richard Haass, heads a US delegation of policing experts to the North this week.
Both Mr Haass and Mr Blair are expected to press for an end to any IRA involvement in the latest unrest in Belfast.
Sanctions against Sinn Féin could emerge this week as evidence of the latest White House thinking on alleged IRA-FARC links in Colombia becomes clearer.
The Northern Secretary said yesterday he was very worried by the evidence of orchestration of the violence by paramilitaries on both sides.
Dr John Reid told the BBC's David Frost: "What I think is more worrying is the general lack of confidence that we are now getting in the process."
Mr Adams said his meeting with Mr Blair had taken on vital importance following what he called "the unacceptable situation in east Belfast and the failure of the political system here to respond properly to it".
He said it was imperative that the pro-agreement parties agreed a way to resolve matters.
The current problems in Belfast, he added, arose "from the crisis within unionism" and what he called "the inadequate leadership being given to unionist people and the fear that the Good Friday agreement is not in the interests of unionism".
He again denounced efforts at a new beginning to policing and insisted that, of all the threats to the peace process, none came from republicans.
The Progressive Unionist Party said the violence could be linked to the existence of loyalist and republican ceasefires.
Mr Billy Hutchinson, the North Belfast Assembly member, said yesterday: "Since the ceasefires in 1994 there's been an increase in, and it's about how people prove to the other community that they're not going to let them get away with it."