Parents at the Holy Cross Catholic girls' school in north Belfast have said they will attempt to bring their children to school by the contested Ardoyne Road again this morning.
There were ugly scenes in Ardoyne yesterday as children and parents walked to the school following a security operation, involving several hundred police and British soldiers, which cleared Protestant protesters from the sectarian interface.
A threat to nationalist parents by loyalist paramilitaries late yesterday highlighted the steep escalation in the dispute.
The Red Hand Defenders issued a threat to the parents not to use the Ardoyne Road entrance again. A meeting of the parents and the school's board of governors last night decided it was up to each parent to decide by which route they would take their children to school.
While some parents said they would not bring their children to the school, more said they would do so and demanded additional protection from the RUC. They said the RUC had 15-foot portable barricades and called for these to be used.
As the parents met the governors last night, riots broke out in at least three areas of north Belfast. On Ardoyne Road near the school itself, police and British army personnel came under sustained attack, with stones, bottles and petrol bombs being thrown by both loyalists and nationalists.
In the Limestone Road and White City areas there was violence as residents attacked the security forces and each other. A device believed to be a pipebomb was discovered in North Queen Street.
Disturbances in Ardoyne continued into the early hours of the morning, albeit with less intensity than earlier in the evening. Police said a number of shots were fired and a car was set on fire in the loyalist area of Ardoyne Road.
Rioting moved down Ardoyne Road to the Ardoyne shopfronts, where a large number of petrol bombs were thrown at police. The Upper Crumlin Road was blocked off as security forces held back both nationalists and loyalists.
By midnight, disturbances on the Limestone Road and in the White City area had ceased but police confirmed a pipe-bomb had exploded in the garden of a nationalist house on the Serpentine Road near White City.
The oil tank of another house in nearby Newington also exploded but police were not sure what caused this.
Several police officers and a number of civilians were injured in the disturbances. One officer was taken to hospital but the injury was not believed to be serious.
The chairman of the school's board of governors, Father Aidan Troy, yesterday announced the board's recommendation that children should temporarily use an alternative entrance through the grounds of an adjacent school until the dispute was resolved.
Father Troy said young girls had experienced "raw, naked vitriol", and the decision meant children would "not run that gauntlet again". He hoped loyalists would see "a hand of friendship" in the decision.