Word: belfast
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...This could be the beginning of the end," remarked a constable at Belfast's central police station last week. "Everyone is going crazy." Even for Northern Ireland, that seemed an extreme statement. But last week, ten more people were killed in Belfast, bringing the total killed in Ulster since 1969 to 701; most were random victims of gunmen generating terror in the midst of a political vacuum...
...renewed sequence of assassinations came as a shock to Ulstermen; since Christmas, the atmosphere in Belfast had been almost benign. British patrols had seemingly pacified the East Belfast area that had been the scene of many "sectarian" killings-the term routinely used in Ulster to describe cases where victims are murdered simply because they are Catholic or Protestant. Apparently exasperated by a delay in the publication of an anticipated British White Paper setting forth a new political structure for Northern Ireland, terrorists shifted their attack. Most of last week's shootings took place in West Belfast, where Catholic Andersonstown...
That was only the beginning. Phillip Rafferty, a Catholic youth of 14, disappeared while on his way from home to a band practice; his body, with bullet wounds in the head, was later found five miles out of Belfast. Another Catholic, Gabriel Savage, 17, was pulled from his girl friend's arms at a shopping center and driven off to his death. Paddy Heenan, 50, was on a bus destroyed by a grenade as it drove through a mixed neighborhood. Two gunmen entered a paint store, lined up the employees, singled out James Greer, 21, a Protestant, and shot...
...death toll also included British Army Sergeant William Boardley, who was shot while setting up a checkpoint on the motorway, and Robert Burns, 18, a Protestant. Burns was killed by machine-gun fire from a car passing a group of men who were standing outside a milk bar in Belfast's Old Park Road district...
...U.D.A.'s militancy characterizes the rising tide of nationalism among Ulster Protestants. The Union Jack is still flown, and curbstones of Belfast's Shankill district remain painted red, white and blue. But more and more narrow doorways are displaying the flag of Ulster, a red cross on a white field, with a red hand upraised in the center. For many Protestants, the British army has become something foreign, and the hostility is mutual. Across barbed-wire peace lines, the soldiers are as likely to mutter about "Protestant bastards" as they do about "Fenian bastards...