50 Hurt in Ulster on 1916 Rebellion Anniversary

BELFAST, Northern Ireland —  Hundreds of Protestant rioters threw gasoline bombs and bricks at police, who opened fire with plastic bullets in daylong skirmishes Monday in the streets of Portadown on the anniversary of the 1916 Easter rebellion.

By nightfall, about 50 people had been injured, 13 of them police officers, during the demonstrations. Burned-out cars littered the streets, and fires raged in buildings set ablaze by protesters.

The British army, for the first time since its troops were sent to Northern Ireland in 1969, flew troops into Portadown, 13 miles southwest of Belfast, as the fighting raged between security forces and extremist Protestants.

Police said that one of their officers was believed to be in serious condition, possibly blinded when hit on the head by a rock. The extent of other injuries, some resulting from an estimated 100 plastic bullets fired by the police, was not reported.

About 1,000 angry Protestants attempted to storm the Roman Catholic area of the town in the early morning. When police forced them back, they tore through the town center, smashing windows and wrecking shops. Crowds used jagged pieces of glass as weapons, which they threw at the security forces.

The unrest began early Monday when 4,000 Protestants led by the Rev. Ian Paisley defied a midnight ban imposed by Britain’s administrator for Northern Ireland, Tom King, and paraded through the town at 2 a.m.

Officers’ Attempt at Order

During the nocturnal parade, rioting erupted in a Catholic housing area, Gardaghy Park Estates, as hundreds of police and army units were rushed in to keep the two factions apart.

The parades in Portadown, by the Apprentice Boys of Derry, had been banned because of intelligence reports that armed “subversive elements” planned to infiltrate the gathering and start trouble.

Officers in dawn raids arrested 20 members of the Ulster Defense Assn., a Protestant paramilitary group, as well as members of the banned Ulster Volunteer Force. A number of arrested men were held for questioning.

The Protestants took to the streets after thousands of anti-British Catholics turned out in Londonderry on Sunday to celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the 1916 rebellion in Dublin against British rule, a pivotal event in Irish history known as the Easter Rising.

On Sunday, a sniper opened fire in Londonderry, seriously injuring a 20-year-old British soldier. A number of other rallies to celebrate the Easter Rising were peaceful.

The 1916 rebellion was crushed in a week, but it marked the start of a five-year guerrilla war that forced Britain to withdraw from 26 of Ireland’s 32 counties in 1921.