A Catholic teenager was hit in the neck by a plastic bullet, and 14 RUC officers and three other civilians were injured in rioting in Portadown, Co Armagh, on Saturday. The violence followed a junior Orange Order march on the nationalist Garvaghy Road.
Nationalists had unsuccessfully challenged the parade in the courts. Around 20 junior Orangemen accompanied by a flute band marched along the lower part of the Garvaghy Road.
Nationalist protesters, several hundred yards from the loyalists, hurled missiles as they were held back by the RUC. Two UVF flags had been placed on the lower end of the road. Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition and several leading local republicans tried to stop the crowd from attacking police. Some youths with scarves tied around their faces threw petrol bombs.
Hundreds of loyalists tried to follow the march up the Garvaghy Road. They hurled bricks and bottles as they were kept back by RUC officers and British soldiers in riot gear.
Mr Mac Cionnaith said he saw a nationalist woman being hit in the face with a brick thrown by loyalists. He condemned the RUC for firing plastic bullets. "Plastic bullets are only supposed to be fired when there is a threat to life or property. There was no such threat here." Nationalists claimed the RUC had fired plastic bullets only at them.
The Portadown Orange Order spokesman, Mr David Jones, blamed the "heavy-handed attitude" of the RUC for the trouble and said residents had raised tensions by trying to get the march banned.
He said a pregnant woman had been injured by the security forces during scuffles. "Whenever the parade passed through on to the Garvaghy Road, the police closed ranks with their riot shields and that incensed the crowd," he said.
Many loyalist and republican youths had been watching the Celtic-Rangers Scottish Cup Final on TV and had been drinking. Three men were charged yesterday with public order offences. They are to appear before Craigavon Magistrates Court next month.
In Lurgan, an RUC woman received neck and shin injuries and two men were arrested when a nationalist crowd threw bottles, bricks and fireworks at the RUC in the Church Place and Market Street areas.
Meanwhile, 50 Protestant schoolchildren and their parents escaped injury when their coach was stoned by a crowd of youths in a nationalist part of north Belfast on Saturday night. The attack happened outside Holy Cross Church on the Crumlin Road as the bus was returning from a day trip to Portrush, Co Antrim.
Mr Wesley McCready of Ballygomartin Presbyterian Church said the children were extremely frightened. "We were very fortunate no one was hurt," he said. In west Belfast a crowd of around 200 threw missiles at Woodbourne RUC station on the Stewartstown Road.
In Derry, an RUC officer was stabbed and another sustained leg injuries after a confrontation with youths in the city centre. The officers were calling an ambulance for an injured man at the time. One man was arrested.