Four die in Ulster nights of violence

Press, 11 August 1980, Page 7

Four die in Ulster nights of violence

NZPA Belfast A British soldier on patrol fn South Armagh near the Ulster border with the Irish Republic was killed late on Saturday night (local time) by a bomb triggered by remote control and a passing motorist was critically injured. A second soldier received minor injuries. The latest death brings to four the total number killed during violence which swept through Northern Ireland late bn Friday and Saturday on the ninth anniversary of internment without trial of suspected Irish Republican Army guerrillas. The measure was ' introduced under powers abolished totally earlier this year. - :

A. British soldier was among three earlier riot victims. He was crushed to death between an army tank and bulldozer tearing down street barricades. Fourteen people were injured on Friday night and early Saturday and 38 arrested. The Irish Republican Army, in a telephone call to

a local newspaper, claimed responsibility for Saturday’s blast. In tense Belfast, littered w;th the burnt out shells of cars and buses, a protest march failed to materialise late on Saturday, but security forces were placed on the alert to prevent a second night of violence,

The leaders of three Roman Catholic "republican clubs,” however, condemned the anti-internment protests as “an excuse for vandalism and destruction" and appealed to parents to keep their teenage children at home over the week-end.

An I.R.A. spokesman retorted, however, that the internment protests were “traditional.”

Despite the 'cancellation one of the most violent nights in the beleaguered province this year ensued with gangs of youths roaming the streets of Belfast, Londonderry, Dungannon, and other, towns hijacking cars, overturning and burning buses, and attacking troops and the police with

gasoline bombs, bricks, and stones.

AU police and army leave was cancelled throughout the province to prevent a recurrence.

Internment without trial was instituted nine years ago by the then-provincial government. In London, nearly 70 Irish prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs prison staged a protest demonstration on Saturday against internment without trial in Northern Ireland.

A prison spokesman said the demonstration broke out in the exercise yard. Two prisoners climbed on to the laundry roof of the prison’s D wing and held up a banner enscribed, "Victory to. the IRA.”

A third prisoner clambered up a drainpipe to the fourth floor of A wing.

The Home Office said in a statement that prison officers then "got most of the 70 prisoners back into their cells, but about 25 refused to leave the exercise yard. There was a scuffle but noone was seriously hurt.”