Belfast politicians condemn bomb attacks on Protestant homes

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Catholic youths who have been attacking Protestant homes in one polarized part of Belfast could have burned to death a newborn baby, residents and politicians warned Wednesday after the latest violence in the Northern Ireland capital. Police said nobody was hurt when Molotov cocktails were thrown overnight at two homes in the Protestant section of Ardoyne, an otherwise Catholic district in north Belfast that has suffered from bitter sectarian divisions since the late 1960s. One of the gasoline-filled bottles burst into flame outside a living room window where a man was sitting on a sofa beside his 18-day-old boy. "I just saw a flash beside the window and looked up and heard the bang and saw the flames," said the man, who spoke on condition he not be identified. "I just grabbed the child, ran up the stairs and rang the police. If the petrol bomb had come through the window, he would have been burned to death."