TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

EUROPE

BELFAST, N. IRELAND (EmergencyNet News) - Police say that eight Roman Catholic churches were damaged in a wave of arson attacks across Northern Ireland overnight. Three were extensively damaged. The fires coincided with growing tension in the British province over Protestants' plans for a controversial street parade next Sunday in the Country Armagh town of Portadown. Most of the churches targeted overnight were in country areas.

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TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

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From the ERRI Watch Center

BELFAST (EmergencyNet News) - Northern Ireland was the scene overnight of a fresh wave of sectarian attacks on property as political leaders increased their efforts to defuse controversy over a banned weekend parade. The Royal Ulster Constabulary said that four buildings were damaged overnight in what police were treating as arson attacks. Three of the buildings were linked to Protestant institutions and one was a Catholic primary school.

There were no injuries, but damage was extensive to one of the buildings, a Presbyterian church annex in Londonderry where a children's playgroup meets during the day. The fires followed ten arson attacks on Catholic churches in British-ruled Northern Ireland the previous night, and the fresh attacks on Protestant institutions appeared to be direct reprisals.

Police said in addition to the Presbyterian church annex in Londonderry, a church in Londonderry belonging to the Protestant Church of Ireland was also damaged by fire overnight, but only slightly. A hall belonging to the Protestant Orange Order outside the border town of Newry was extensively damaged in another suspected arson attack late on Thursday. And in Garvagh, 20 miles east of Londonderry, a fire was reported at a Catholic primary school overnight.

Police said they were following a line of inquiry that the attacks on Catholic buildings were the responsibility of the pro-British Loyalist Volunteer Force, but they did not name any suspects in the fire-bombings on the Protestant institutions.

ERRI MORNING NEWS SUMMARY

ERRI MORNING NEWS SUMMARY

TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND (EmergencyNet News) - Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan said that two thousand police and troops are on duty in Portadown to prevent trouble on Sunday. Flanagan urged Orangemen to act peacefully and not give others with more malevolent intent the opportunity to wreak violence in Northern Ireland.

He said the huge security operation and barricades were there to protect everyone. Flanagan said, "They are not there for confrontation. My officers seek confrontation with no one, they seek merely to provide protection to everyone. There is no need for violence, it serves no one's purpose ... I would urge everyone to act calmly."

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TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

EUROPE

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND (EmergencyNet News) - Northern Ireland's Protestant "Orangemen" were reportedly locked in a stand-off with RUC police on Sunday, digging in near a barricade erected to stop them from marching through a Catholic area of Portadown while elsewhere in the province, some protests turned to violence. Just hours after they were turned back by a huge steel barrier, the Orangemen erected tents for the night and said they would stay as long as it took to gain access to Garvaghy Road. They have marched through that area for generations in what the road's Catholics residents regard as a triumphalist parade.

While the uneasy stand-off continued in Portadown, violence broke out in Belfast and in other cities and towns in Northern Ireland as some loyal to British rule took to the streets in support of the Orangemen. Police fired two plastic bullets at youths who had lobbed fire bombs at them in the loyalist area of the town of Carrickfergus, but no injuries were reported.

In an area close to the Belfast city center, riot police were stoned by a large number of youths. As night fell, police said gangs of youths tried to block roads with barricades and bonfires in north and east Belfast and other small towns and villages. These included Millisle, near Belfast, and Newbuildings, outside the northern, mainly Catholic city of Londonderry. Opponents of the Orangemen also resorted to violence in at least one town, Newry, where police arrested eight people on suspicion of trying to set fire to an Orange Hall that was torched in an arson attack last week.

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From the ERRI Watch Center

BELFAST (EmergencyNet News) - The strain on the Northern Ireland peace process was showing on Tuesday after another night of violence across the province. In the worst incidents, three separate police patrols in Belfast came under gunfire. In another, two explosive devices were thrown at a police officer's home in the town of Carrickfergus.

Elsewhere the RUC reported "dozens" of incidents as the loyalist backlash over the Drumcree march ban continued. A RUC spokesman said one patrol came under gunfire in north Belfast, at about 2330 hours local time. Earlier a patrol in the western part of the city, was targeted by gunmen, as was a similar patrol in Crumlin Road just after midnight. No one was hurt in any of the incidents.

Just before 2330 hours local time, the wife of a RUC officer escaped injury when two explosive devices were thrown at their home in Carrickfergus. The devices were thrown over a rear wall and one exploded. Carrickfergus remained one of the hotspots overnight with several hijackings and fire bombings.

But clashes with police were at their worst in Belfast where loyalists threw an explosive device at a police patrol off the in the northern part of the city. In the southern of the city a mob of about 30 threw gasoline and paint bombs at the York Road RUC police station while in nearby Sandy Row there was a series of running battles between protesters and police with cars set on fire and officers under attack from youths throwing missiles.

Towns hit by violence and demonstrations included Lisburn, Antrim, Carrickfergus, Killyleagh, Ballymena, Newtownards, and in the north- west there were protests on roads in Londonderry and Strabane. Public buses in all of Northern Ireland stopped running long before dark after at least two were torched and earlier rail services were forced to a halt by bomb threats.

Tensions grew in Portadown on Tuesday morning when a crowd gathered near the St John the Baptist Catholic church at the bottom of Garvaghy Road. The crowd, separated from Garvaghy Road by rolls of barbed wire, held loyalist flags and sang loyalist songs, while troops and police in riot gear looked on and two Army helicopters circled overhead.

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TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

EUROPE

BELFAST (EmergencyNet News) - Gun and bomb attacks erupted in Northern Ireland on Wednesday as tension rose over a ban on a Protestant parade through a Catholic enclave that has become a flashpoint in the British province. Members of the Protestant Orange Order, who want to march down the Catholic Garvaghy Road in the town of Portadown, showed no sign of abandoning their four-day-old stand-off with police and army blocking their planned route.

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TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

EUROPE

BELFAST (EmergencyNet News) - British security forces in Northern Ireland faced gunmen and bombers on Thursday as the province's Orange Order held talks with Prime Minister Tony Blair over a banned Protestant march through a Catholic district. Police and army units came under attack in Belfast and nearby Newtonabbey, as well as in Portadown, where the Protestant Orange Order has been forbidden from staging its annual march along the mainly Catholic Garvaghy Road.

In one incident, police said a man with an imitation gun had tried to hijack a police patrol car. Plastic riot control bullets were fired on Protestants who are in the fifth day of stand-off with police and army units preventing them marching along the Garvaghy Road at Drumcree on the edge of Portadown. Overnight, police in riot gear were sent in by helicopter to reinforce the stand-off at Drumcree as thousands of Orange order members crowded into the area.

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TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

EUROPE

From the ERRI Watch Center

BELFAST (EmergencyNet News) - Five Northern Ireland police officers were seriously wounded in increasingly violent clashes on Friday with Protestants angered at a ban on their annual march through a flashpoint Catholic area. Four of the officers suffered shrapnel wounds when two nail bombs were thrown across police lines.

Protesters had forced their way through barbed wire entanglements erected by security forces to prevent the Protestant Orange Order from marching along Portadown's Catholic Garvaghy Road. A fifth policeman was wounded after being struck on the face by a ball bearing, probably fired from a catapult.

Police officials said their officers and British soldiers deployed in Portadown to keep the Orangemen back had faced down crowds containing "a significant hooligan element."

Assistant RUC Chief Constable Chris Albiston said, "Despite the provocative and often dangerous activities of members of the crowd, which included throwing blast bombs, petrol bombs, fireworks and bricks, police remained firm and with the assistance of the army they held their line."

ERRI MORNING NEWS SUMMARY

LEAD FOCUS

By Steve Macko, ERRI Risk Analyst

LONDON (EmergencyNet News) - Scotland Yard said on Friday that police thwarted a bombing attack in London and arrested three men. There was no immediate indication of the target for the attack, but Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Grieve, head of Scotland's Yard's anti-terrorist branch, said that police had arrested three suspects in possession of explosive devices which were intended to be used "within minutes."

In a statement, Grieve said: "This evening's arrests are the result of prolonged investigation into dissident criminal Irish republican terrorist groups, and a successful surveillance operation carried out by the Metropolitan Police and MI5 which had thwarted an imminent planned terrorist attack in London. We arrested three men this evening and they were found to be in possession of explosive devices. We believe these terrorist devices were intended to be used in London within minutes."

Later, police in Ireland said they believe a former IRA quartermaster general masterminded Friday's foiled bid to launch a terrorist fire bombs attack on central London. It is thought the man involved walked out on the mainstream terror group nearly a year ago in protest at its renewed cease- fire, and set up his own paramilitary organization.

On Friday, when police pounced on the suspects in London, underground rail stations were closed at the height of the rush hour as the joint operation between the Metropolitan and Irish police unfolded. The planned bombing raids, involving incendiary devices thought to have been targeted on a number of London stores, would have amounted to the breakaway group's most ambitious terror strike so far.

But the plot was prevented by a slick operation involving Scotland Yard, the Irish police and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Within hours, all of the main suspects were in custody in London and Dublin, the Irish border town of Dundalk and in Ireland's Co Wexford.

Ten people on Saturday were still being questioned in both countries in connection with the incident. The incident began in Dundalk on Friday morning, when police raided an address and found guns, ammunition, bomb parts and important documents. Afterwards a man was arrested and contact was established with Scotland Yard that prompted the London moves.

Scotland Yard on Saturday said it could not expand on any of the details or on how many devices had been found or their intended targets.

Witnesses in London on Friday spoke of the dramatic arrests by armed officers. People living in a south London neighborhood, where two men were arrested told of police descending on the area heavily armed. One shopkeeper said he had been looking out the window from his store when he saw two cars screech to a stop.

The shopkeeper said, "About eight blokes got out, obviously the old Bill with caps and flak-jackets. They went for a guy with a rucksack, wearing jeans and a little denim jacket. They just told him `Get on the floor'. He seemed more shocked than resisting because he didn't seem to know what was happening. There were ten guns pointing at his head and he just got down on the floor. They didn't touch him, he more or less got on the ground himself, but they were all around him."

The action came after an Irish police operation against hardline organizations determined to resist the Ulster peace deal by the British and Irish governments and the province's political leaders.

The group led by the former IRA quartermaster general is thought to have a membership of around 70, and Friday's security successes in Britain and Ireland were thought to have taken out some of their key figures. Irish police are thought to have infiltrated the organization, whose leaders' movements are currently watched around-the-clock.

The organization has links with the 32 County Sovereignty Committee, formed last year specifically to oppose the peace process involvement of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing. The paramilitary arm of the movement has been responsible for at least one bombing in Northern Ireland, but there has also been a series of spectacular failures, thanks to police intelligence operations.

The main failure for the group came earlier this year, when police intercepted a bomb-carrying car as it was about to board a Britain- bound ferry in the port of Dun Laoghaire, near Dublin. Later, a plot by the dissidents to raise arms through a raid on a security van, collapsed spectacularly in Co Wicklow, when one of the group was shot dead by police.

Police activities against dissident Irish republican outfits on both sides of the Irish Sea were today being maintained following indications that the new organization was attempting to link up with other terrorists opposed to the continuing Ulster peace process.

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TERRORISM/POLITICAL VIOLENCE

EUROPE

BELFAST (EmergencyNet News) - Police in Northern Ireland came under gunfire from protesters during another night of violence. The Royal Ulster Constabulary said their vehicles parked along a confrontation line in the town of Portadown were hit by rounds fired from a rifle and a handgun. Police in turn fired plastic riot control bullets. Local media reports said about 20 people had been injured by plastic bullets, one of them critically.