Loyalists blamed for Belfast death

Eighty police and soldiers have been injured in two nights of rioting in Belfast

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- A Roman Catholic postal worker has been killed in Belfast in what police said bore the hallmarks of a loyalist sectarian killing.

Officers said the 20-year-old man was shot several times outside a sorting office in the largely Protestant Rathcoole area in the north of Northern Ireland's capital on Saturday morning. He died two hours later in hospital.

Two men in dark clothes and with scarves pulled across their faces fled the scene in a silver Renault car that was later found abandoned, police said.

Detective Superintendent Roy Suitters said the killers had been lying in wait for their victim.

"This poor fellow has obviously been targeted as a Catholic working in a loyalist estate and for no other reason," he told the Press Association.

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The Red Hand Defenders paramilitary group claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported. That name has been used as a cover identity by both the Ulster Defence Association and the Loyalist Volunteer Force in the past.

The killing followed a quiet night in the divided Ardoyne area of the city, after two nights of rioting in which hundreds of Catholic and Protestant youths threw fire bombs, acid bombs and stones at police trying to keep them apart. More than 80 police officers were injured.

This week's violence flared near Holy Cross, a Catholic primary school that was at the centre of angry sectarian clashes last autumn.

Tight security for the walk to school

The school was the target of months of demonstrations by Protestants, who daily blocked the road and shouted insults at the Catholic girls and their parents. They said Catholics had attacked their homes in the bitterly divided area.

The protests, which ended in November, forced police to deploy hundreds of officers backed by soldiers to ensure the children's safety each day.

The school was closed on Thursday but reopened on Friday, with a heavy police presence but no sign of the demonstrators. The streets around the school remained calm on Friday night after Protestant groups said they did not plan to resume the protests.

Police said they would establish a community police unit for the Ardoyne area to prevent further violence, and would step up patrols to protect Catholic teachers.

Rioters smashed teachers' cars at a Catholic school during this week's violence, and Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan said police had received phone threats against teachers, purportedly from violent anti-Catholic groups.

"In the light of concern about these threats we will be taking special measures which will include increased patrolling," he told The Associated Press.