BELFAST, Northern Ireland - July 13, 2010 - Northern Ireland leaders condemned Irish nationalist rioters Tuesday who wounded 82 police officers during two nights of street clashes sparked by the province's annual parades by the British Protestant majority.
While most of the injured officers suffered only cuts and bruises, others suffered burns and broken hands. Two remained hospitalized: a policeman wounded in the chest and arms by a shotgun blast, and a policewoman who had a paving stone dropped on her head from a shop's rooftop.
The violence in working-class Catholic parts of Belfast and other towns came both before and after tens of thousands of Protestants of the Orange Order brotherhood marched at 18 locations across Northern Ireland in an annual show of communal strength. It was the worst rioting in Belfast since the same event exactly one year ago.
Politicians and police commanders said the rioters, influenced by Irish Republican Army dissidents opposed to compromise, were chiefly motivated to attack the police themselves. IRA dissidents have focused in recent months on trying to lure police into ambushes, until now with little success.
The Northern Ireland police commander, Chief Constable Matt Baggott, released video of Monday's rioting in two parts of Belfast captured by surveillance helicopters. The footage showed hundreds of masked teens and young men swarming and pummeling police armored vehicles and swinging clubs at ranks of shield-wielding police while the officers stood their ground or retreated slowly.
