***Police Service of Northern Ireland said a man is in custody after a car drove into a crowd on Monday, trapping a 16-year-old girl underneath
Riot police stand back as water cannon is fired in north Belfast, where disorder has left 24 officers injured. Photograph: Joe Gilmartin/Demotix/CorbisHenry McDonald.The Guardian.Tuesday 14 July 2015
Twenty-four police officers have been injured, including several attempting to rescue a girl from underneath a car during sectarian disorder in north Belfast, police confirmed.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said a man remained in custody on Tuesday after a car drove into a crowd of Catholics near the republican Ardoyne district on Monday, injuring a teenage girl. The 16-year-old has since regained consciousness and her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.
One officer needed 16 stitches after being bitten in the hand during several hours of rioting in the Crumlin Road and Woodvale Road areas.
Northern Ireland’s first minister, Peter Robinson, said the violence could not be justified “regardless of the frustrations or the cause”. He also condemned an attack on a bus in Greysteel, Co Derry, carrying Orangemen and their supporters back to the Irish Republic from a march in Coleraine on Monday.
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Martin McGuinness, the deputy first minister, joined Robinson in denouncing the Co Derry attack and the disorder and rioting in Belfast.
The trouble in north Belfast began at about 7.30pm after an Orange Order feeder parade returning from the main loyalist march in Belfast, commemorating the 325th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, was banned from returning via the Crumlin Road past Ardoyne.
Bottles, bricks, stones, metal ladders and thick bolts launched from catapults were fired at police lines blocking the Ligoneil Orange lodge’s path across Woodvale Road from the loyalist side.
As heavily armoured police officers were bombarded with missiles, there were angry scenes further up Crumlin Road as a maroon Nissan car appeared to plough into a crowd of nationalists outside shops in Ardoyne. Several people were injured, including the teenager.
Local people and police officers rushed to tip the car on to its side after the 16-year-old fell underneath it. Gerry Kelly, the Sinn Féin assembly member for north Belfast, said the quick actions of residents and police saved her life.
The driver, who is understood to be a member of the Orange Order, was taken out of the car and immediately arrested. A number of bystanders had tried to pull him from the vehicle.
Shortly after this incident, violence flared at Twaddell Avenue, a Protestant street facing on to the Ardoyne shops. A PSNI inspector was struck on the head with a piece of masonry before police deployed water cannon to push a crowd of loyalists back.
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The trouble lasted for several hours but was not on the scale of the violence surrounding the 2013 banned Orange march, which resulted in three days of rioting across working-class, loyalist areas of Greater Belfast.
The injured girl is undergoing surgery for a broken pelvis, the Belfast health trust said.
Fr Gary Donegan, a local priest who was on the scene at the time, said: “She has a head injury and she has a neck injury.
“But I was actually with her, the poor wee girl was crying, she thought she was dying, and I was trying to reassure her. We got her mammy on the scene to reassure her. Her mother has gone to the hospital.
“She’s able to move her legs at the moment, but obviously not having medical expertise I can’t comment as to how seriously she is injured, but it’s obviously miraculous that she’s still alive.”
