Belfast clashes despite school deal

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Petrol bombs were thrown at police and soldiers during clashes involving Catholic and Protestant residents, police have said.

The violence happened a day after sectarian tension outside the girls primary school Holy Cross in the north of the city had been suspended.

The school, in the Ardoyne Road area, is just three miles (five kilometres) from North Queen Street, Belfast, where the overnight clashes saw about 100 people throwing missiles and stones.

Police are investigating reports that one person was injured in the fighting which broke out Saturday night.

The area, where Protestants and Catholics live next to each other, has been the focus of several incidents during the past few months.

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Stones, bottles and 13 petrol bombs were thrown at security forces Sunday morning, damaging several police vehicles, forces said.

A protest by Protestant residents outside the Catholic Holy Cross Primary School was called off following talks between both sides and politicians. Dozens of young girls, some as young as four-years-old, have endured either a daily torrent of insults and obscenities or stony silence on their school run from Protestant adults during the past 12 weeks.

The Protestant residents have been arguing for the children to be taken to another school entrance away from their homes. The Catholic parents have insisted on the right to choose which way to take their children to class.

The demonstrations were called off after talks between the parents and Northern Ireland's First Minister David Trimble and his Catholic deputy Mark Durkan.

The parents were reassured by the offer of a package of community safety measures including closed circuit television and more police patrols in the area.

Another Catholic primary school was badly damaged in an arson attack on Sunday, a local priest said.

Catholic priest Monsignor Thomas Bartley, who lives in the grounds of St Anne's Primary School in Dunmurry on the outskirts of Belfast, said he raised the alarm around 7:30 a.m.

"They drove a car in, put it beside the building, set the car alight, and put part of the building on fire," he told Reuters.

"One block has about four classrooms and it is utterly destroyed."

Police said they had not established a motive for the attack.