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| Britain |
| NIreland Riots After Police Arrest 3 Over Killings |
| 2009-03-15 |
| Irish nationalist gangs hurled gasoline bombs at police Saturday after three alleged IRA dissidents were arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers in an attack designed to trigger wider violence in Northern Ireland. Police operating in armored cars and flame-retardant suits said none of their officers was injured during the rising mob violence in the Irish Catholic end of Lurgan, a religiously divided town southwest of Belfast. Rioters also blocked the main Belfast-to-Dublin railway line that runs alongside the hardline Kilwilkie neighborhood of the town. Later, police said they arrested a 37-year-old man and 30-year-old woman, and seized a gun and ammunition in the neighboring town of Craigavon, where Irish Republican Army dissidents shot to death a policeman Monday. Police would not say whether those arrests and the arms find were connected to the March 7 shooting of the soldiers or the subsequent killing of the policeman. Police said the couple were being questioned about unspecified "serious terrorist crime." The unrest came in direct response to Saturday's arrest of Colin Duffy, 41, the best-known Irish republican in Lurgan. Police arrested two other suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents aged 32 and 21 in the overwhelmingly Catholic village of Bellaghy -- all on suspicion of shooting to death two soldiers last weekend. Police arrested two teenage rioters and advised motorists to stay away from the Catholic north side of Lurgan to avoid having their cars seized and burned as road barricades. An Associated Press reporter driving through the area at dusk Saturday night had to make a rapid escape to avoid youths -- some wearing masks or with scarf-covered faces -- hurling rocks and bricks in an apparent attempt to stop his vehicle. Police long considered Duffy the IRA godfather of Lurgan and twice charged him with murders in the town in the run-up to the IRA's 1997 cease-fire -- which breakaway factions are now trying to destroy. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #5 Went pub crawling in Belfast in Nov 1992 with an engineer friend who worked in the water dept there in Belfast. The Brit army Land Rovers had chains on the sides to stop molotov cocktails and there was a gunner through a hatch on the top of the vehicle. It felt like a scene in Bladerunner. Heh. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2009-03-15 17:19 |
| #4 Glenmore, the Republic of Ireland will always be a safe place to visit, but it seems Northern Ireland is going through one of its more unsettled periods. |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2009-03-15 12:28 |
| #3 We had gotten passports and started planning -dreaming, given financial state - a trip to Eire but this kind of stuff does not make me feel so bad about postponing it. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-03-15 10:43 |
| #2 Irish nationalist gangs hurled gasoline bombs at police Saturday after three alleged IRA dissidents were arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers No wonder, IRA emphatise with Paleos---the mentality is very similar. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2009-03-15 07:10 |
| #1 It is so much easier to break than to build. |
| Posted by: Whiskey Mike 2009-03-15 05:25 |