Loyalists, republicans blame each other for Belfast riots
Loyalists and republicans have blamed each other for rioting in east Belfast which left three people with gunshot wounds last night.
The three were hurt when a nationalist gunman opened fire from the Catholic enclave of Short Strand into Protestant Cluan Place.
Sinn Fein claimed the rioting was part of a long-running loyalist campaign against Catholics in east Belfast, but the Progressive Unionist Party has accused Sinn Fein or directly organising last night’s violence.
PUP leader David Ervine said: “My first abiding thought today is that Sinn Fein are a group of corporate liars.
"They are manipulating the situation at the interfaces to marginalise the SDLP, because they’re less relevant in such circumstances, and to create the conditions where they can have an interaction between the police and themselves in order to identify the fact that, as far as they’re concerned, the police don’t operate by consensus in Northern Ireland. It’s hugely difficult and it’s for stinking, selfish reasons that Sinn Fein and the IRA are behaving in this manner.”
Local Sinn Fein Assembly member Joe O’Donnell said: “Once again, for the third night in a row, the Short Strand area of east Belfast came under sustained attack from pipe bombs, blast bombs and petrol bombs. 40 to 50 houses, families evacuated, destroyed or partly destroyed.
"It just went on all night . . . What is happening here is that these attacks, while of a sporadic nature, are very high in intensity. They’re just moving around this area, systematically, street by street, just ripping the heart out of this community.”
