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N.Irish man killed, fresh sectarian violence erupts
( 2001-07-30 11:42 ) (7 )

A gunman killed a Protestant and wounded his Roman Catholic friend overnight as fresh sectarian violence flared in Northern Ireland overnight, witnesses said on Monday.

Police said they were investigating the attack, but the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein blamed a Protestant guerrilla group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

The attack occurred on the outskirts of the British province's capital Belfast in a mixed Protestant and Roman Catholic area late on Sunday as another night of violence -- gunfire and petrol and blast bombs -- racked parts of the city.

Northern Ireland's peace process has been plunged into crisis by a stalemate between the Protestant majority and Roman Catholic minority over the absence of guerrilla disarmament, the future shape of policing and Britain's military presence.

Britain and Ireland plan to deliver a new peace package this week to politicians from the two sides.

Local residents said the dead man was a 19-year-old Protestant and that his Roman Catholic friend was wounded in the ankle.

Sinn Fein politician Gerry Kelly said there had been a series of shootings by the UDA in north Belfast on Sunday night.

"While we were trying to calm the situation, we got word that two friends -- one Protestant and one a Catholic -- had been attacked by the UDA. They had assumed that both were Catholics," Kelly told reporters.

Mainstream Roman Catholic and Protestant guerrilla groups have declared truces while politicians try to draw a final line under three decades of conflict that killed more than 3,000 people.

Violence erupted in several parts of Belfast where Protestant and Catholic areas meet up. The city has been hit by a number of outbreaks of street violence in recent weeks.

Police said rival crowds clashed near the city centre and that officers were attacked when they tried to quell the trouble. "A number of shots were fired, blast bombs and petrol bombs were thrown," a police spokesman said.

In Dublin, state broadcaster RTE said on Sunday Irish police had arrested four suspected members of the dissident republican guerrilla organisation the Real IRA, including two of the outlawed group's leaders.

The Real IRA has been blamed by security sources for a number of attacks in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain over the past 12 months.