Attacks Rise Ahead of Annual Irish March

Arsonists targeted a Catholic school and several Protestant buildings, including a church, overnight in a fresh wave of sectarian attacks in Northern Ireland, police said Friday.

Late Thursday, vandals apparently retaliating for arson attacks on 10 Catholic churches since Wednesday night torched a building belonging to the Orange Order outside the predominantly Catholic town of Newry. The Orange Order, a conservative Protestant brotherhood, holds a march through a staunchly Catholic neighborhood in Portadown each year.

About an hour later, the fire brigade was called to a Catholic school in Garvagh that was slightly damaged in a deliberately set fire, police said. An arson fire early Friday also caused minor damage at a Protestant church in Londonderry. And in a separate incident, a building next to a Protestant church in the same city was extensively damaged in a blaze.

The attacks have raised tensions in the run-up to the Orange march scheduled for Sunday.

The British-ruled province’s parades commission has ruled that the Orangemen march should be rerouted away from the Catholic areas. But the Orange Order has vowed to go ahead with its parade Sunday from rural Drumcree Anglican church past Catholic homes along Garvaghy Road in Portadown. The order says it wants to march along the traditional route it has used since 1807 to proclaim its loyalty to the British monarchy.

On Friday, police and British soldiers threw a ring of steel around Portadown, posting armored cars and checkpoints on every road in advance of the march, which has sparked widespread violence each year.