Police Stop IRA Dissidents From Marching

Northern Ireland fire service officers deal with several fires at an inductrial estate in Newry, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006. It is widely suspected that dissident Irish Republican terrorists carried out the fire bomb attacks that destroyed several major stores. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison) (Peter Morrison - AP)

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Riot police blocked supporters of Irish Republican Army dissidents Wednesday from parading in a hard-line Protestant town, as IRA dissidents were accused of destroying three shops with firebombs.

More than 100 police in flame-retardant suits and helmets blocked the parade from leaving a hard-line Catholic enclave of Ballymena, an overwhelmingly Protestant town where a 15-year-old Catholic boy was beaten to death in a mob attack in May, Northern Ireland's most recent sectarian killing.

Both Protestants and moderate Catholics had criticized the dissident parade as deliberately provocative and agreed with British authorities that it should be prevented from leaving a Catholic housing estate.

Last year, the same parade ended in stone-throwing confrontations with police and a rival Protestant mob. But on Wednesday night, the heavy police presence _ backed by two massive mobile water cannons _ ensured that the marchers retreated from police lines without confrontation.

But IRA dissidents opposed to the IRA's 1997 cease-fire apparently struck elsewhere. Fires razed three shops overnight in the predominantly Catholic border town of Newry.

No group claimed responsibility, but firefighters and police said the fires appeared to have been ignited by cassette-sized firebombs that had been placed in racks of flammable goods in three shops selling sports equipment, furniture and carpets, respectively. Such firebombs were designed by IRA engineers in the 1980s to detonate by timer at nighttime, wrecking the business without causing injuries to shoppers or staff.

The last wave of firebombings blamed on IRA dissidents happened in the run-up to Christmas 2004. Wednesday's attacks coincided with the 35th anniversary of Britain's decision to impose internment without trial of IRA suspects, a threshold event that backfired and fueled support for the IRA.

The Ballymena march was also supposed to be commemorating internment, a policy that Britain abandoned in 1976 in favor of bringing IRA suspects to court to face specific criminal charges.

The Catholic demonstrators, who included supporters of two splinter groups called the Real IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, said they were determined to win the same, wide-ranging right to march as Protestants, who stage more than 3,000 parades from April to August _ a tradition many Catholics resent as designed to intimidate them.

So far this year, Northern Ireland's so-called "marching season" has been the most peaceful in Northern Ireland since 1969, when the modern conflict was ignited amid widespread rioting over one such Protestant march. The biggest Protestant parades on July 12 passed without problems and with no British troops on the streets for the first time since 1969.

Ballymena, which has a mostly Catholic north and mostly Protestant south, is already riven with sectarian tensions over the May murder of Michael McIlveen. The 15-year-old Catholic was pursued by Protestant youths from the town's main cinema, cornered and fatally beaten with baseball bats.

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On the Net:

Parades Commission ruling, http://www.paradescommission.org/parades/Parade.cfm?id16205