Northern Ireland's political and security leaders condemned Irish nationalist militants Tuesday who injured 82 police officers during two nights of rioting sparked by the province's annual parades by the British Protestant majority. While most of the officers sustained minor injuries like cuts and bruises, 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 rooftop above. The rioting 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 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. Brian Rea, chairman of a joint Catholic-Protestant board that oversees Northern Ireland police, said the rioters “were intent on causing maximum disruption and inflicting terror on police and the wider community.” Several Belfast roads remained closed Tuesday as workers cleared away the remains of the riots: blackened shells of cars that were stolen and torched; roadways littered with glass shards and scorched by impacts from Molotov cocktails; errant objects-wood planks, a beer keg, iron scaffolding, a child's bicycle - that had been thrown at police; garbage cans lined up on a bridge and set on fire.
