More Troops Arrive In N. Ireland Violence Expected Saturday During Protestant Marches

Britain sent more troops to Northern Ireland on Wednesday, alarmed by growing violence in advance of Protestants’ weekend marches through the province’s two main cities.

Roman Catholic protesters have pledged to block two marches Saturday by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland’s main Protestant fraternal group, through a Catholic section of south Belfast and the mainly Catholic city of Londonderry.

Rioting has broken out in Catholic areas of Northern Ireland for three straight nights, since British authorities used 1,500 police and troops Sunday to force an Orange march through the main Catholic section of Portadown, 30 miles southwest of Belfast.

The protesters, led by Irish Republican Army supporters, hope that by blocking the march routes they will force British authorities to halt the Orangemen, who are loathed by most Catholics. Such a move would probably provoke Protestant riots.

Adding to the tensions, small outlawed paramilitary groups on both sides are threatening to kill opponents if their side doesn’t prevail.

The Irish National Liberation Army, a maverick IRA offshoot, threatened to kill Protestants at random if the Belfast march went ahead; the pro-British Loyalist Volunteer Force vowed Wednesday to target Catholics in the neighboring Irish Republic if any Orangemen were halted.

Pat Byrne, commander of the Irish national police, said his force was taking the Protestants’ threat “very seriously and doing everything in our power to make sure it does not happen.” Checkpoints along the 300-mile border with Northern Ireland were on alert.

An additional battalion of 400 troops from the Stafford Regiment arrived in Northern Ireland, bringing the total number of soldiers and police to more than 30,000.

Neither side in the marching dispute is prepared to talk following British authorities’ decision to swamp the Catholic part of Portadown with troops before dawn, enabling 1,000 Orangemen to march through that afternoon.

The Catholic rioting that followed has left more than 100 civilians and police injured, and caused at least $19 million in damage, including 440 vehicles hijacked and burned.

IRA gunmen have fired wildly at British forces from Sunday to Wednesday, wounding two officers. On Wednesday, they kept up the pressure with false bomb threats that snarled traffic, and they burned several hijacked vehicles in Dungannon, 40 miles west of Belfast.

Each July 12, the Orange Order stages hundreds of parades across Northern Ireland to commemorate the late 17th-century victories of King William of Orange over the deposed Catholic king, James II - the campaign Protestants say secured their superior position in Northern Ireland.

John Hume, Londonderry’s moderate Catholic member of British Parliament, asked British Prime Minister Tony Blair to pursue “a moratorium of all street activity and all marches.”