Northern Irish police were braced for another night of sectarian violence on the streets of Belfast on Saturday over the city council’s decision to restrict the flying of the British flag.
Tensions have flared in the British province since Belfast’s council ruled on Monday that the flag should no longer be displayed above the City Hall all year round, angering loyalists favouring close ties with Britain.
A heavily-policed protest against the decision, attended by some 2,000 loyalists, passed peacefully outside City Hall on Saturday.
But demonstrators burned two Republic of Ireland flags and sang sectarian songs at the hour-long protest, while some covered their faces with scarves.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said protesters had dispersed, but there were pockets of disorder in east Belfast and one police officer had been hospitalised.
Eight officers were injured in riots on Friday night and more than a dozen people were arrested.
Assistant Chief Constable Will Kerr of the PSNI said loyalist paramilitaries had orchestrated some of the violence.
“I am urging everyone to be calm, take a step back and think about how this violence is affecting not just their own communities but the whole of Northern Ireland,” he said.
The violence has left 27 police officers injured since Monday, while a Belfast lawmaker has received a death threat over the flag decision and two bombs were found elsewhere in Northern Ireland this week.
The spike in tensions overshadowed Friday’s visit to Belfast by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who played a key role in Northern Ireland’s peace process in the 1990s.
Clinton called for calm, saying there was “no place in the new Northern Ireland for any violence”.
“Any remnants of the past must be quickly condemned,” she told a press conference.
Some 3,500 people died in the three decades of violence between Northern Irish Protestants favouring continued union with Britain, and Catholics seeking a unified Ireland.
A 1998 peace agreement largely ended the conflict, but sporadic unrest and bomb threats continue as dissident offshoots remain violently opposed to the power-sharing government in Belfast, formed of Catholic and Protestant parties.
Police brace for more violence in Belfast
