Shots fired at police during Belfast rioting

Gunshots were fired at the police early on Friday morning during rioting by Catholic youths in Belfast after a small Protestant parade celebrating a 17th century military victory passed their estate the previous day, but no officers were hit.

The overnight violence was the culmination of a series of parades that pro-British Protestants stage annually in the British-ruled province, a tradition seen as provocative by Irish nationalists who want to be part of a united Ireland.

Dozens of youths threw bricks, snooker balls and petrol bombs at hundreds of riot police at the point where Catholic and Protestant areas of the city meet. Police responded with water cannon and plastic bullets. At least 10 gunshots were fired at police lines early on Friday morning, but no police officers were injured, a police spokeswoman said.

However, she said nine officers had been injured during the overall rioting which saw a burning car pushed towards a line of riot police. Six men were charged with public order offences, she added.

Since a peace deal was signed in 1998, violence between the province's Catholics and Protestants - which has raged on and off for three decades - has largely ended. However, much of Belfast remains divided along religious lines. The latest flare-up began shortly after a parade of 15 members of the Protestant Orange Order walked in silence past a row of shops in the nationalist Ardoyne area, flanked by riot police.

The parade was smaller than usual. Most of the 500 or so Orange Order parades across the province, involving hundreds of thousands of marchers, bandsmen and watching crowds, passed off peacefully. Fighting between Protestants who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK and Irish nationalists, mainly Catholics, who want it to be part of a united Ireland, tore the province apart during a three-decade period known as the "Troubles."