North Belfast under siege
A young nationalist mother was still trying to calm her five
distraught children on Monday morning 6 July. The previous
evening a loyalist gang had twice attacked her home in Rosapenna
Street, North Belfast, by using a ladder to scale the peaceline
before launching attacks on houses with bricks and paint bombs.
The woman, who did not wish to be named, said ``It was a gang of
four or five men. One climbed onto the low roof at the back of
the house and smashed the back windows. The others tried to break
down the back door. We were all terrified.''
Fortunately, local residents promptly raised the alarm and chased
the gang from the area on both occasions.
The family, who had been driven from their home in the Torrens
area of the city two years ago by a loyalist mob, vowed to remain
in their home.
Several hours before the attack Orangemen and other loyalists
staged a one hour stand-off with crown forces on the corner of
Rosapenna Street and Oldpark Road.
On the same night the home of an elderly couple in Victoria
Gardens, off the Cavehill Road, came under attack from a loyalist
mob throwing petrol bombs. Some of the mob, wielding iron bars
and breeze blocks, attacked a number of houses before being
repelled by residents from the surrounding area. The couple were
evacuated from their home and community activists have since been
helping them to move out. Crown forces, who had a presence in the
area at the time, stood by during the loyalist assault.
Earlier in the evening, around 6pm, a crowd of some fifty
Orangemen attempted to march their original ``Tour of the North''
route through four nationalist areas of north Belfast. They were
stopped at Cliftonpark Avenue by the RUC. Gerry Kelly, a local SF
Assembly member, described the attempted march as ``intimidation
by the Orange Order. Clearly the Orange card is once again being
played.''
In the Ligoniel area loyalists felled trees and telegraph poles,
blocking roads into the small nationalist enclave.
d on the Ballysillan Road two loyalists were caught by the RUC
in possession of firearms and ammunition.
Also on Monday night crown forces at the RUC barracks on York
Road were attacked by loyalists with a blast bomb and petrol
bombs. And shots were fired at them in nearby Duncairn Gardens
from the loyalist Tiger's Bay. On the other side of Tiger's Bay a
loyalist mob gathered to take photographs and film nationalist
residents and crown forces on the Limestone Road. Neither the RUC
nor the British troops present did anything to prevent this
provocative behaviour.
Later in the evening the Catholic Holy Cross Boys School in
Ardoyne was damaged in a sectarian assault.
On the previous night roads were blocked across the north of the
city including in Glengormley, Crumlin Road, Fortwilliam
roundabout and Skegoneill Avenue.
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