Rioters attack Northern Irish police on Orange parade day

BELFAST (Reuters) - Nationalist rioters in Northern Ireland attacked police with bricks, bottles and other missiles in several places on Monday, wounding at least seven officers on a day of parades by the Orange Order, police said.

Police responded to the rioting by hundreds of nationalist youths in the mainly Roman Catholic Ardoyne area of North Belfast with water cannon and plastic bullets. At least one gunshot was fired at police.

At least one teenager was taken to hospital from the scene, which was on the route of a large parade by the Orange Order, made up of Protestants who want Northern Ireland to remain a British province.

The nationalists tried to attack the Orange march as it passed through the area but police managed to separate the two groups, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

Disturbances continued at night, and police said they seized a firearm children had been playing with in North Belfast.

The marchers, who wear orange sashes and bowler hats to commemorate a 17th century victory of Protestants over Catholics, cause tension each year with the Catholic minority, many of whom would like to see a united Ireland.

Northern Ireland has enjoyed relative peace since a 1998 deal ended the IRA's armed campaign to end British rule of the province.

SPLINTER GROUPS CAUSE RIOTS

Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally which now shares power with the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said the Real IRA and other Republican splinter groups caused Monday's riots.

"The Real IRA or whatever they may call themselves and some other splinter organisations sent people over here with the sole aim to cause riots, to bring this further down into sectarianism," the BBC quoted Gerry Kelly, Sinn Fein's spokesman on policing and criminal justice, as saying.

Hundreds of marches ended peacefully on Monday, police said.

"However it is very disappointing that there were a minority of people, in North Belfast, Derry, Armagh, Rasharkin and other parts of Northern Ireland who showed total disregard for local communities," Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay said.

"They displayed the worst possible face of Northern Ireland -- a face of bigotry, sectarianism and intolerance that is not representative of the vast majority of people," Finlay added.

The Reuters reporter saw the injured youth lifted semi-conscious from the crowd. Witnesses said several more teenagers were also taken to hospital.

Earlier on Monday, there was a small explosion in Armagh county, where one of the biggest parades of the day was taking place. No one was hurt there.

"There are clearly Republican dissidents in the community who want to cause as much tension as they can and today's bomb could easily have killed people," the Orange Order said in a statement.

The Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, another splinter group, killed two British soldiers and a policeman in March in attacks condemned by mainstream groups on both sides of the sectarian divide.

The peace process received a boost last month when the biggest pro-British Protestant paramilitary groups said they were ending their armed struggle and dumping their weapons.

(Additional reporting by Andras Gergely; editing by Tim Pearce))