SHOTS FIRED at police lines during disturbances in Ardoyne late on the night of the Twelfth of July amounted to “attempted murder”, PSNI chief constable Matt Baggott said at a press conference yesterday.
Mr Baggott and senior PSNI officers expressed their anger that shots were fired at police officers by suspected dissident republicans during the rioting that erupted at Ardoyne in north Belfast.
No officer was wounded by the gunfire although 20 officers were injured during the disorder that followed the annual Orange Order parade through the area.
There was also continuing recrimination yesterday over decisions made by the Parades Commission relating to the Orange return parade and the subsequent parade organised by the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (Garc), judged to be sympathetic to dissident republicans.
By yesterday evening just four people were arrested for alleged involvement in the Ardoyne trouble, but police made clear that in the coming days and weeks there would be many more people arrested and charged – as happened following similar disturbances in Ardoyne in recent years.
Assistant chief constable Will Kerr, who had overall operational command for dealing with the Ardoyne rioting, said. “We will be making a significant number of arrests, as we did last year, over the course of the next weeks and months to make sure that people are placed before the courts and answer for their decisions.”
He said the local community must work to stop the annual outbreaks of violence in the area. “I am angry that we have these three days of annual madness where it seems that everybody thinks the peacekeepers are a legitimate target,” he said.
Most of the violence at Ardoyne followed from disturbances when a Garc parade was allowed on to the Crumlin Road at about 6.20pm on Thursday. For a short period there was potential for even more serious trouble when protesting loyalists and some of the marchers started hurling missiles at each other. Police and Garc marshals managed to shepherd the nationalist marchers into Brompton Park in Ardoyne.
Nigel Dodds, the DUP MP for north Belfast, deplored the “mad decision” by the Parades Commission to allow the Garc parade because of its alleged dissident connections and because it involved a “dissident republican crowd intent on trouble”.
“The orchestrated violence aimed at police, including gunshots, by republican dissidents is disgraceful and reprehensible. These people do not want peace and do not want any negotiation or resolution of any of the problems we face. They cannot be allowed to hold everyone else back,” he said.
Peter Obsorne, chairman of the commission, defending the decision to allow the Orange and Garc rival parades, said it was time for politicians to “take ownership” of the issue of contentious parades.
