N.Ireland police blame dissident republicans for gunshots

On Tuesday night, three people, including a press photographer, were injured by gunfire, during a long night of violence in the capital.

Two other men suffered burn injuries during the rioting, which saw the use of petrol bombs, bottles and bricks, and officers discharging baton rounds.

A woman aged 20 has been arrested on suspicion of possessing an offensive weapon and assaulting police.

A Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) spokeswoman said: “Police can confirm that dissident republicans were responsible for the shots that were fired during last night’s disorder in East Belfast.”

Dissident republicans, believed to be from the Oglaigh Na Heireann group, have been responsible for numerous attacks on members of the police and army, including a bomb planted outside the city’s courthouse in March and the death a few days later of Ronan Kerr, a Catholic constable in the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who was killed when a bomb exploded under his car.

And the following month, police discovered a 500lb bomb in a van on the main Belfast to Dublin Road.

Earlier, the PSNI had blamed the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) for initiating the violence that has spilled over in Belfast.

“This has got to stop, it is a time for cool heads, for people to take a step back.” Asst Chief Constable Alistair Finlay

Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI Alistair Finlay pointed the finger squarely at the UVF, which said it had completely decommissioned its weapons in 2009.

“The UVF in East Belfast started this – there was no sense of anyone trying to finish that,” Mr Finlay said.

“Their hands are upon this, whether by direction, by omission or commission.”

“This has got to stop, it is a time for cool heads, for people to take a step back,” he added.

The press photographer was injured in a shooting: three shots were fired during the disturbances around the Short Strand area of east Belfast, which has seen its most serious rioting for several years, as masked youths pelted each other with stones and fireworks.

The Press Association photographer, who was covering the violence, suffered an injury to the leg and was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where he was said to be in a stable condition.

“This has nothing to do with the UVF. People have been under sustained attack for months from the Short Strand – bricks, stones, paint-bombs – it just goes on and on and we’ve had enough.”

Community worker Maggie Hutton tells Alex Thomson what it’s like to live in the area. Read more: Living amid the rubble in East Belfast.

Veteran Northern Ireland Journalist Eamonn Mallie told Channel 4 News that the PSNI “fingering the UVF is not helping the situation (because) the loyalists are feeling like victims again,” adding that the police statement would “aggravate” matters, and warning that thing could turn “very nasty”.

Mr Mallie added that Prime Minister David Cameron is “very worried” about the situation in Northern Ireland amd the the British government is “trying to de-escalate this at the highest level.”

The violence that has marred Northern Ireland’s capital this week “has huge implications,” he added.

A history of UVF violence
• 1974: Numerous car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan bombs in 1974, which killed 33 civilians and wounded almost 300.
• 1970s: The Shankill Butchers, an UVF unit, stalked, tortured and killed innocent Catholics in Belfast after abducting them late at night. The reign of terror came to an end in 1979 when gang leader, Lenny Murphy, was convicted of murder. Released in 1982, he was shot dead in 1985 by the IRA.
• 1994: UVF shot dead six men in a bar while watching Ireland’s opening football World Cup game in what came to be known as the Loughinisland massacre in.
• 2010: One year after supposedly decommissioning, a paramilitary watchdog found that the UVF’s leadership sanctioned the “public execution” of loyalist Bobby Moffett who was shot dead in front of shoppers on Belfast’s Shankill Road.