Bonfires, Shots Mark Prelude to N. Irish Marches

Thousands of hard-line Protestants lighted towering bonfires at midnight Tuesday to celebrate a victory from centuries past, but many worried whether they would win this month’s battle to march past Roman Catholic areas.

Rowdy fife and drum bands entertained heavily drinking crowds at scores of bonfires--stacks of wood planks, discarded furniture and tires, some 100 feet high--before today’s mass Orange Order parades across the British province. Adding to the air of menace, masked gunmen fired volleys of shots beside at least two bonfires.

Police said a man was shot and killed today, and his body was found near a bonfire in Larne, about 20 miles north of Belfast, the provincial capital.

There were no immediate details of the shooting, but crowds at the bonfire briefly confronted police when they arrived to investigate.

More than a week of rioting has caused widespread intimidation, forcing businesses to close early and keeping motorists off the roads, but it has done little to sway authorities’ determination to prevent Orangemen from going near several hostile Catholic areas.

Police commanders said they hoped the turmoil would subside once the Orangemen march through Belfast and more than a dozen other towns today to commemorate the 1690 victory of Protestant William of Orange over his Catholic foe, James II.

“We’re taking nothing for granted, but the protests must run out of steam sometime,” said Chief Supt. Brian McCargo of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the province’s mostly Protestant police force.

Police said 146 suspected rioters had been arrested, nearly 1,000 gasoline bombs seized, 88 vehicles hijacked and burned, and 57 officers and five British soldiers wounded since trouble first flared July 2.

Groups of Protestants blocked more than a dozen major roads in Belfast as darkness fell Tuesday, a scene that was repeated in at least 10 other predominantly Protestant towns.