Catholic Protesters Attack Policemen at Londonderry Parade

Two Northern Ireland police officers were injured Saturday as sporadic scuffles marred a traditional Protestant parade in this largely Catholic city.

Police said a third officer went to his colleagues’ rescue when he saw them being severely beaten and fired two shots in the air “to disperse the crowd and prevent further injury.”

Both officers, one with a bloodied forehead, were hospitalized in stable condition.

The violence capped a tense, hate-filled afternoon in Londonderry, where an agreement between Protestant leaders of the Apprentice Boys brotherhood and Catholic protesters from the Bogside Residents Group had minimized the chance that the parade would trigger outright sectarian conflict.

About 15,000 Apprentice Boys marched through the city after a compromise between Protestant and Catholic residents to end controversy and violence that have marked the parade in the past.

The Bogsiders agreed not to physically block the annual parade, as they have threatened in previous years. The Protestants promised not to play music on walls overlooking the Bogside and not to parade in the Diamond.

But as the first of more than 10,000 Apprentice Boys and bands from across Northern Ireland passed along one edge of the Diamond, the central square within the city walls, about 100 Catholics on the other side jeered and hurled stones and bottles.

Egged on by drunken and baying spectators, many of the more than 50 swaggering “kick the pope” bands accompanying the Apprentice Boys intentionally pumped up the volume as they neared the square.

Beer cans, bottles, rocks and chunks of brick sporadically flew through the air during the 2 1/2 hours it took the parade to pass along the edge of the Diamond.

Many of the spectators struck riot police and the armored cars that separated the two camps. Others hit Protestant marchers, who responded by furiously but futilely trying to breach the lines of riot police.

Police made just one arrest during the parade, but for hours afterward, they waged running battles to flush Catholic youths back into the Bogside.

The annual Apprentice Boys parade is one of the most famous events of Northern Ireland’s Protestant summer marching season and has often sparked violence because Catholics regard the march as crude triumphalism.