Militants, Police Clash at N. Ireland Protests

Catholic militants fought with police, torched trucks and tossed firebombs Saturday, protesting hard-line Protestant parades across Northern Ireland.

Scuffles left dozens of officers and demonstrators injured in Belfast before culminating in protests in Londonderry, where Protestants celebrated the northern city’s 1689 defense from a besieging Catholic army.

Suspected Irish Republican Army members hijacked and burned four trucks and vans on the city’s Catholic west side in Londonderry, while more than 10,000 Protestant members of a fraternal group paraded through the city center nearby.

Catholic men and youths hurled stones, bottles and 130 gasoline bombs at the lines of heavily protected riot police, who ensured that there were no direct Protestant-Catholic clashes in Northern Ireland’s second-largest city. At least eight officers suffered minor injuries.

Catholic militants also attacked police lines early Saturday before another small march in the bitterly polarized town of Lurgan. The IRA-allied Sinn Fein party said police fired eight plastic bullets, injuring two Catholic protesters. Five people were arrested, police said.

The violence overshadowed efforts by more moderate Protestants and Catholics to commemorate this weekend’s first anniversary of the deadly Omagh car bombing that killed 29.