BELFAST SHOOTING Five Injured By Shotgun Pellets

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32099, 22 September 1969, Page 15

BELFAST SHOOTING Five Injured By Shotgun Pellets

(N.Z. Frew Assoctolion— Copyright) BELFAST (Northern Ireland), Sept. 21. Four civilians and a British Army officer were wounded last night by shotgun pellets fired in a mixed Roman Catholic-Protestant area of Belfast. Troops moved in immediately and threw up a barbed-wire barricade to hold back about 20 angry bystanders. t

Army sources said that the group dispersed later and that the streets were quiet.

The shooting incident came after the removal of most of the barricades in Belfast, thrown up during last month’s riots.

Police said three of the wounded men were in hospital. None was seriously hurt The wounded serviceman was a non-commissioned officer.

The shooting occurred in New Lodge Road, about a mile from the centre of the capital. Witnesses reported that a man fired both barrels of the shotgun at close range. Police said that it was an isolated incident and the rest of Belfast was quiet . In east Belfast, a mile and a half away, a Protestant crowd of about 300 threatened to invade a Roman Catholic area after a street argument ’ut police and troops moved in and dispersed the crowd.

The security forces.were helped by the Rev. lan Paisley, the militant Protestant leader, who appeared during the confrontation on Madrid Street and urged the crowd to break up and go home. Earlier, Mr Paisley addressed 500 of his followers in a field near Burn Toilet Bridge near Londonderry, 70 miles from Belfast, and the scene of a ProtestantRoman Catholic clash early this year.

Mr Paisley said “politicians and pressure groups” had tried to force him to cancel the rally. But he said that he would refuse to keep silent on the issues facing Northern Ireland. In Londonderry the barricades are coming down and will be replaced by “the Bogside line,” a line of white paint round an area of 27,000 people. The Royal Ulster Constabulary will step across this line at its peril. A police car

which came close to the area on Friday was attacked with a petrol bomb. “We’ll never let the police] i-> here again,” said a member of the Citizens' Defence Association which runs Bogside. “They’re out and they can stay out” ' Twice this year, for a week in January and this time for more than five weeks, Londonderry's Bogside has declared its independence behind a score of barricades. The barred area now includes not only the maze of red-brick streets of Bogside but the neighbouring Creggan district, a Roman Catholic housing development. Now, under agreement with the British Army, the barricades are to fall again, probably on Monday. In return, the Army has given an assurance of protection from attack and has agreed that the police and “B” Specials will not enter the area.