A number of shots were fired at the RUC as nationalists and loyalists rioted in Belfast for the second night in succession. At least 11 police officers were reported injured across the city. One police officer suffered a head injury as security forces attempted to separate rival factions at North Queen Street. One man was arrested.
Trouble last night broke out when security forces clashed with around 300 loyalists at Glenbryn Park. Rioters hurled blast bombs, petrol bombs and paint bombs. Nine low velocity shots were fired at police lines.
An estimated 200 nationalists at nearby Ardoyne Road were held in check by Provisional IRA members. Two petrol bombs were thrown at police. Two nationalist youths later flung petrol bombs at the RUC from a rooftop at nearby Woodvale roundabout.
More than 200 RUC and soldiers policed the riot. There was sporadic rioting in other parts of the city. Five police officers received minor injuries pushing back a crowd of nationalists at Springhill, west Belfast. There were disturbances at Limestone Road, Ballysillan where a crowd of 200 nationalists gathered after a Roman Catholic school was extensively damaged by fire.
The trouble at Ardoyne began to die down shortly after midnight. Army bomb disposal experts were sent to the area to examine lengths of copper piping amid fears they may be pipe bombs containing explosives.
Meanwhile Mr Billy Hutchinson, Progressive Unionist Party assembly member, said he was injured by police during trouble in north Belfast.
Mr Hutchinson went to the Mater Hospital for treatment after, he said, being hurt when police tried to push a loyalist crowd back in the Glenbryn area. He would be making an official complaint to the Police Ombudsman, he said.
The rioting followed a day of simmering tension in north Belfast.
A local child was lucky to escape injury yesterday afternoon after a pipe-bomb was hurled into the back garden of a Catholic home. The blast threw the girl into a fence.
Tensions between nationalists and loyalists in the Ardoyne area have been high since Tuesday, when loyalists placing flags on lampposts outside the Holy Cross Girls' Primary School clashed with parents. The school closed on Wednesday after loyalists blocked a road leading to it. In rioting on Wednesday night, 39 RUC officers were injured after hundreds of loyalist and republican rioters showered police and soldiers with more than 100 petrol bombs, acid bombs and bricks.
Both loyalists and nationalists fired at police and petrol bombs were thrown at ambulances taking away injured officers.
During the disturbances, police fired a number of baton rounds, the first time the new L21 A1 round had been used.
Yesterday morning, parents attempting to bring their children to the school's front entrance, on a loyalist stretch of Ardoyne Avenue, were prevented by police after the road was again blocked by loyalists.
In retaliation, some of the parents blocked the Crumlin Road for a time.
Several children were in tears and only about 60 of the school's 230 pupils eventually entered by a back gate. Parents were prevented from collecting their children via Ardoyne Avenue in the afternoon.
The Assistant Chief Constable for Belfast, Mr Alan McQuillan, said the situation was very serious. The North's Security Minister, Ms Jane Kennedy, held emergency meetings with politicians from north Belfast.
Mr Gerry Kelly of Sinn Fein said loyalist paramilitaries had orchestrated the violence. He likened the situation, with children having to use the back door of a school, to the struggle for racial equality in America. "It's like something out of Alabama in the 1960s." Mr Billy Hutchinson said the children had not been prevented from attending school and blamed nationalists for increasing tensions.