Europe

Belfast moving toward armed conflict?

rasouli_amir20130113070225837Amid escalating flag riots by pro-British unionists in the Northern Irish capital of Belfast, which forced the police to use plastic rounds and water cannons on Saturday, the key weapons finds related to the anti-British IRA nationalists over the past months have raised fears of tensions turning into armed clashes.

The police have discovered several “explosively formed penetrator devices” (EEPs), which are horizontal armor-piercing mortars from dissident republican group IRA, the most recent in Derry last month.

This comes amid persisting riots that began on December 3 and left at least 29 police officers injured on Saturday as they tried to tackle a crowd of around 1,000 pro-British loyalists using plastic bullets and water cannons.

The loyalists’ riots started after local councilors decided on December 3, 2012 that the British flag should be flying over the Belfast City Hall only for 17 designated days instead of all year round, which was the former norm.

Rioters have been hitting officers with a range of missiles including petrol bombs and at one point last week they even shot at the police.

The high-powered explosives find in Derry, which was the fourth such discovery in Northern Ireland in recent months, along with the growing tensions in the pro-British riots, raises fears that the province is moving toward renewed conflicts, unseen since a 1998 peace deal that ended 30 years of clashes between Catholic Irish nationalists seeking independence and reunion with Ireland and Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of Britain.

The grim sense of foreboding is further strengthened by the fact that the decision to fly the British flag on 17 days in the year at the Northern Ireland parliament building, Stormont, almost led to no protest over the same flag arrangements at the Belfast City Hall.

That leaves one wondering whether the political understanding among opposing groups in Northern Ireland as witnessed in the 1998 peace deal has been achieved with the public remaining hugely divided on old issues.

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