{"id":20059,"date":"2013-01-12T20:33:17","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T19:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uk.news.yahoo.com\/northern-irish-police-fire-plastic-bullets-rioters-140039043.html"},"modified":"2013-01-12T20:33:17","modified_gmt":"2013-01-12T19:33:17","slug":"sixteen-police-injured-in-northern-ireland-clashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/sixteen-police-injured-in-northern-ireland-clashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Sixteen police injured in Northern Ireland clashes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"first\">BELFAST (Reuters) &#8211; Four police officers were injured during clashes between pro-British and Irish nationalist youths in Belfast on Saturday following another protest against the decision to remove the British flag from city hall.<\/p>\n<p>Nationalists threw golf balls and stones at a crowd walking home from a rally in the city centre demanding for the return of the flag. Police used water cannon and at least one plastic bullet round in a bid to restore calm.<\/p>\n<p>The unrest over the past five weeks has been some of the most sustained in the British-ruled province since a 1998 peace deal ended 30 years of conflict between Catholic Irish nationalists seeking union with Ireland and Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>Exposing a deep vein of discontent with the peace deal, loyalists have held nightly protests since councillors voted last month to end a century-old tradition of flying the British union flag every day over the city hall.<\/p>\n<p>Loyalist politicians have joined their nationalist rivals in condemning the violence, but they have been unable to prevent groups of young men draped in British flags from clashing with police.<\/p>\n<p>The protesters have complained that the removal of the flag was a step too far in the ebbing of loyalist dominance in the province, saying too many concessions had been given to Irish nationalists in a power-sharing government.<\/p>\n<p>At least 1,000 loyalists, some with British flags and &#8220;No Surrender&#8221; banners, gathered at City Hall on Saturday. Hundreds of police were escorting them back towards east Belfast when the clashes began.<\/p>\n<p>Reinforcements including dozens of jeeps, a helicopter and at least three water cannon trucks were sent in to try to control the crowds.<\/p>\n<p>(Reporting by Stephen Mangan; Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Rosalind Russell)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pixel.quantserve.com\/pixel\/p-89EKCgBk8MZdE.gif\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BELFAST (Reuters) &#8211; Four police officers were injured during clashes between pro-British and Irish nationalist youths in Belfast on Saturday following another protest against the decision to remove the British flag from city hall.<br \/>\nNationalists threw g&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}