'Sleepwalking Into An Abyss'
Two people were shot on Monday as violence erupted for a fourth night running in a flashpoint district of Belfast, Northern Ireland police said.
The gunfire came just hours after Northern Ireland's police chief warned the province "was sleepwalking into an abyss" following several days of sectarian rioting.
The violence has been centered on the Short Strand district, a Roman Catholic enclave in mainly Protestant east Belfast.
"Two people have been shot, one was hit in the back and one in the foot," a police spokesman said. "Their conditions are not yet known."
Police said the shots were fired from the Catholic area into a Protestant zone. The violence flared as Protestants in nearby Newtownards Road were holding street parties to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's Golden Jubilee.
Northern Ireland's police chief Colin Cramphorn warned on Monday the province faced a "fresh nightmare" as it headed into the volatile summer "marching season" -- a tense time in the British-ruled province when Protestants parade to celebrate centuries-old battlefield victories over Catholics.
"It is only a question of time before somebody is killed if the situation is not de-escalated," Cramphorn told a press conference in Belfast.
"We are poised on the brink of a long, hot summer of discontent with potentially dire consequences for everyone in Northern Ireland, and potentially beyond in the rest of the island of Ireland and Great Britain."
Cramphorn called on local politicians, church and community leaders to show "real leadership" to defuse the situation.
On Monday night large numbers of riot police and British soldiers were deployed around the Short Strand district in an effort to keep the rival factions apart.
It was a repeat of Sunday's operation, when 100 police and 300 troops were needed to quell rioting.
On Sunday night, angry crowds threw homemade gas bombs, setting two houses on fire, and Protestants and Catholics pelted one another with stones. Police said a 39-year-old man and two 15-year-old boys were injured by bullets shot into their Protestant neighborhood.
David Ervine, whose small Progressive Unionist Party is linked to an outlawed Protestant group, the Ulster Volunteer Force, said the man had been hit in the back and legs and was "ill but comfortable." He said the two youths had been shot in the legs.
Police said the trouble began when people from Short Strand began throwing stones and other objects onto Cluan Place.
"These people have gone through a weekend of terror," Ervine said.
Joe O'Donnell, a city council member from the Irish Republican Army-linked Sinn Fein party, said Protestants had provoked the Short Strand residents.
"I understand there have been shots fired from here tonight, but there was gunfire into here first," he said last night. "We stood and watched 40 or 50 semi-uniformed loyalist (Protestant) paramilitaries march down and line up."
Cramphorn said people on both sides, several of them pensioners, had been forced from their homes during the disturbances.
On Friday 10 police officers were injured in serious rioting in which they were pelted with bricks, gasoline bombs and blast bombs. There were disturbances on a smaller scale on Saturday.
Despite the 1998 Good Friday peace deal, which aimed to end Northern Ireland's 30-year conflict between minority pro-Irish Catholics and majority pro-British Protestants, sporadic rioting continues to break out.
Cramphorn said police were trying to identify ringleaders of the recent troubles, and had arrested 14 people in the past two weeks in connection with violence in north Belfast.