Nearly 90 people were injured in serious rioting in north Belfast during an Orange Order July 12 parade.

The Police Service said about 80 officers were hurt, one seriously, and about seven civilians, including two journalists.

The Crumlin Road and other streets around the nationalist Ardoyne area were strewn with the debris of violence today, after nationalist protesters launched attacks on the security forces after the Orange Lodge parade had passed by.

The security forces had attempted to hold back nationalist protesters as hundreds of Orangemen marched along the Crumlin Road for the return leg of their parade.

Even though senior republicans urged youths not to attack police and troops, bricks and suspected pipe bombs rained down from rooftops as the rioting broke out shortly before 8pm. A car was hijacked and set on fire close to police lines. Officers used water cannon and fired several rounds of sponge-tipped plastic bullets in a bid to quell the violence.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, who with party colleagues got a dousing from the police water cannon, said that, despite the violence, it could have been much worse. "The fact is that the vast majority of people have demonstrated peacefully and in a calm manner," he said.

The Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey urged the Government to review guidelines on parades following the rioting. Sir Reg said the parades’ issue needed to be addressed as a matter of urgency. "I am calling on the Secretary of State to take a grip on this and put it on the table for discussion in the autumn, because we need a solution. We can’t allow what is an issue of cultural rights to be turned into a political football, and there has to be a consensus on how this is dealt with."

The West Belfast MP also blamed police strategy for the trouble. "When the police moved in, in what I think was quite a reckless manner, they took management completely away from the stewards. They brought the water cannon in too quickly, we should have been allowed to keep order," he insisted.

Nigel Dodds, the North Belfast Democratic Unionist MP, said it was utterly deplorable that once again a totally peaceful, lawful parade was attacked by republicans on a main arterial route. "The scenes of intense violence which has left so many police officers and members of the press injured are a scandal and a disgrace."

He said the use of blast bombs "clearly demonstrates premeditated, organised violence on the part of republican paramilitaries."

There had been a number of other attacks on Orangemen and their bands in North Belfast, said Mr Dodds, adding: "Either Sinn Fein/IRA cannot control this violence or do not wish to control it. Either way, it raises serious questions about the future of the political process."

Local priest Father Aidan Troy, who had worked in the community to try to ensure a peaceful day, said: "I feel a huge disappointment and a huge sadness.I have been out and looked at the streets this morning and it says failure. It all went so horribly wrong."

The Orange Order called on the Parade Commission to ban all future protests at the Ardoyne. A spokesman for the order’s leadership said the latest rioting proved that the Commission’s policy of "constantly appeasing" hard-line republican residents by granting them the right to protest at the Ardoyne, was "threatening the stability of Northern Ireland and putting the lives of police officers at risk".

The Order said: "The rioting happens so often that the Ardoyne has become synonymous with serious, orchestrated violence. Do we have to wait for people to die before the Parades Commission acts to put a stop to it?"

In Londonderry a policewoman suffered minor facial injuries after petrol bombs were thrown at officers. Two other people were injured. The trouble flared after the city’s main Orange parade had finished, with Orangemen parading the city’s ancient walls for the first time in 13 years after an agreement between the order and nationalist residents brokered by the local business community.

Early today another five officers were injured and 11 people arrested during petrol bombing attacks on police in both the Cityside and Waterside areas of Derry.

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