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Posted on 09/05/2001 2:00:12 AM PDT by ppaul

Policeman hurt as homemade explosive lands near those guarding Catholic schoolgirls

BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Sept. 5 — A homemade bomb believed to have been thrown by pro-British Protestant Loyalists exploded on Wednesday near police guarding Roman Catholic schoolgirls in Northern Ireland, injuring one policeman, witnesses said.

SHRIEKING GIRLS cowered beside their mothers as the bomb exploded shortly after 9 a.m., terrifying parents and schoolgirls walking through a huge security cordon to get to a school where rioting Protestants have taunted them for three days.

One policeman sustained a serious leg injury from the blast, a police spokesman said.

A witness said he saw a “fizzing object” fly through the air before a loud explosion which caused children and their parents to scramble for safety.

Several rocks flew over police lines and landed in the path of the children seconds before the bomb was thrown. Wednesday was the third day in which stone-throwing Protestants confronted parents and children going to a Roman Catholic elementary school in Belfast.

On Tuesday, parents who led their girls up the rubble-strewn street toward the school — determined to use the front door rather than a safe back entrance — were forced to turn back despite the efforts of riot police to hold back the protests. The first day of school was Monday.

“I was really terrified, I was really scared,” said 6-year-old Roisin, who entered the Holy Cross Girls Primary School on Tuesday under police protection, past mobs of Protestants who stood mostly on side streets, throwing stones and hurling abuse.

“Fenian bastards,” some shouted, while others yelled “You are the scum of the earth.” Fenians were pro-independence Irish agitators in the 19th century.

“It is unbelievable in the 21st century that we have to have this type of situation to get kids to school,” said Gerry Kelly, a senior figure in Sinn Fein, the political party linked to the Irish Republican Army.

Protestants, a minority in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, have said their action is in retaliation for attacks on their homes by Catholics. They say some of the girls’ parents are Irish Republican Army members who organize violence.

The Protestant part of the district is separated from the Catholic part by high metal fences. Houses on both sides of the divide have been hit by stones, gasoline and pipe bombs, and bursts of gunfire, forcing many residents from their homes.

Police battled rival mobs early Tuesday as hours of violence followed ugly confrontations near the Holy Cross primary school, which serves girls up to age 11.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary, the provincial police force, said 21 officers were injured during clashes overnight, and that rioters had thrown more than a hundred gasoline bombs. There were also reports of five gunshots from the Protestant side and three from the Catholic side.

‘NO JUSTIFICATION’

At a meeting with parents Monday night, the school’s governors recommended using a back entrance which is less vulnerable to protesters. But the school’s chairman, the Rev. Aidan Troy, said some parents resisted.

“Basically they are saying ‘We don’t want to go through any back door, we want to go through the front door,”’ he said.

“But they are sensible enough to know they are going to have to take a look at what arrangements are in place for them to be able to go through that front door,” Troy said.

During the night, youths from both camps hurled bricks, bottles and occasional gasoline bombs and crude grenades at the officers, who wore body armor, helmets and flame-retardant suits.

The rioters also hijacked and burned at least two cars. Rioters also threw a pipe bomb into the backyard of a Catholic-occupied home in the Serpentine Gardens neighborhood, the site of frequent unrest. Nobody was reported injured.

“It’s the parents we have the problem with, not the children,” said Jim Potts, leader of the protest group that blocked the road outside the school for two weeks in June. “When they stop attacking this community, we’ll think about letting them back up the Ardoyne Road,” he said Monday.

Potts — identified by police as a member of the Ulster Defense Association, the province’s major outlawed Protestant group — said the British government should build a new elementary school for Catholic girls in their own area.

Another outlawed Protestant group, the Red Hand Defenders, threatened to attack Catholic parents and police officers guarding the area. Police consider the group a cover name used by Ulster Defense Association members, who are supposed to be observing a cease-fire in support of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord. UDA flags fly from many posts and houses in the Protestant section of Ardoyne.

The police commander, Ronnie Flanagan, pledged to protect Catholic parents and children no matter which entrance they used.

“There is no justification, no basis whatever for attempting to block the path of children going to school,” he said, appealing for both sides to negotiate a compromise. “Society must solve these problems, but not in some way that children are used as a bargaining chip.”

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