Belfast Catholics riot over Protestant parade

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5izNTMK0hWvtHXdhYEKuEQawlxC_AD99DQN7G1

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK – 27 minutes ago

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Masked and hooded Belfast Catholics hurled gasoline bombs, fireworks and other makeshift weapons at police Monday as the most bitterly divisive day on the Northern Ireland calendar reached an ugly end.

Several rioters and at least seven officers were injured, none seriously, when Irish nationalists in Ardoyne, a militant Catholic enclave of north Belfast, tried to block a parade by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood.

Tens of thousands of Orangemen spent Monday mounting hundreds of similar parades across this British territory, almost all of them trouble-free, in an annual stress test for the province's fragile peace.

More than 1,000 Orangemen and their accompanying bandsmen eventually did march down the main road past Ardoyne to the beat of a lone drum — but only after riot police fought an hourlong street battle backed by a surveillance helicopter and three massive mobile water cannons.

religion as a handy marker. What is not clear from the article is that the traditional parade would be analogous to the KKK showing up to parade through Harlem.