Rioters fire on police

Press, 4 August 1981, Page 8

Rioters fire on police

NZPA-Reuter Belfast British troops came under sniper and rocket fire yesterday in rioting in Belfast after an eighth Irish Republican guerrilla died on hunger strike in prison. Kieran Doherty, aged 25, a member of the Irish Republican Army serving 22 years for possessing explosives and a gun, died in the Maze prison on the seventy-third day of his fast.

He was a member of the Irish Parliament in Dublin, having won his seat in the June General Election after appealing to Irish voters to show their support for the political fast aimed at changing prison conditions. A British soldier was badly injured in Catholic West Bel-

fast when a rocket hit his personnel carrier. Earlier, two policemen were killed when their vehicle was blown up, apparently by a landmine, near Omagh in the centre of the province. The I.R.A. said it set the mine.

Rioters in a Republican area of Belfast, capital of the British province of Northern Ireland, rolled a blazing lorry down a hill into the fence of a police station and bombarded troops with petrol, acid, and blast bombs as they strove to remove it. Troops came under sniper fire but none was reported hit. Soldiers and the police fired plastic bullets to disperse crowds and armoured cars were kept busy smashing street barricades.