BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AFP) – Tension remained high in Belfast yesterday as Northern Ireland’s police chief blamed a Protestant group loyal to British rule for the worst violence to hit the province in many years.

Thirty-two police officers were injured, at least four seriously, while two civilians found themselves in hospital, after a night in which shots were fired at police and soldiers, firebombs thrown, and cars stolen then set alight.

The trouble grew out of Saturday’s annual Whiterock parade, part of a series of processions held in Northern Ireland every year during the so-called “marching season” by members of the Protestant Orange Order.

“Police officers and soldiers have come under sustained attack,” said Hugh Orde, chief of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who said seven weapons and a bomb factory were discovered during raids yesterday.

“They have been attacked with missiles, petrol bombs, blast bombs, and pipe bombs. They have been shot at.”

Orde added: “The Orange Order must bear substantial responsibility for this. They publicly called people onto the streets. I think if you do that you cannot then abdicate responsibility. That is simply not good enough.”

In Belfast yesterday, burnt-out car wrecks and rubble were strewn over roads in a chilling reminder of Northern Ireland’s darkest days, which many thought ended with the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.

While a big clear-up operation got under way, police stood ready for any further outbreaks of trouble, with a stretch of the West Circular Road sealed off at one point after a suspicious object was found.

The Orange Order’s Belfast grand lodge rejected what it called Orde’s “intemperate, inflammatory and inaccurate remarks”, saying its members and supporters had been victims of “brutal and heavy-handed police action”.

“At this stage, all we would say is that if what we saw today was policing, it was policing at its worst.”

Britain’s secretary for Northern Ireland affairs, Peter Hain, called the violence “totally unacceptable… Attempted murder cannot in any way be justified. There can be no ambiguity or excuse for breaking the law”.

Police yesterday showed reporters video images, taken from the air, clearly showing two men with handguns firing as many as 15 shots. They also put on show two police Land Rovers riddled with 20 and 30 bullet holes respectively.

Orde said police and soldiers fired 450 plastic bullets, and seven live rounds, before order was restored.

“This was more like the violence of 20 or 30 years ago, although I wasn’t here then,” he said.

The Orange Order – which takes its name from Protestant King William of Orange, who defeated James II’s Catholics in Ireland in 1690 – represents hardline opinion in Northern Ireland’s Protestant, or loyalist, community, which wants to keep British rule.

Marchers were angered by a decision by Northern Ireland’s Parades Commission to reroute the Whiterock march to keep it out of areas dominated by Catholics, who generally favour a united Ireland.

The Orange Order responded by calling on Protestants to take to the streets to protest the decision.

Catholic activists and marchers taunted each other as the march passed near the sectarian divide, before demonstrators clashed with police.

Veteran Protestant politician Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, while appealing for calm, blamed the Parades Commission for “the mess that has been created”.