Twenty-one police officers were injured in Belfast on Monday after coming under fire during rioting on the biggest day in the loyalist marching season.

It was claimed that dissident republicans had been bussed in to provoke violence.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said that the most serious violence was in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, where nine officers were hurt.

At one point during the disturbances a masked youth fired at least one shot with a handgun at police lines. The police came under a sustained barrage from youths throwing petrol bombs, bricks, bottles and golf balls.

Police responded with water cannon and fired 18 non-lethal AEP (attenuating energy projectile) rounds at their attackers.

Three vehicles were hijacked during the violence. The area was reported calm by 2am yesterday.

About 200 young people were involved in the clashes, some appearing to be as young as 11. A loaded rifle was handed in to police after a group of children were seen playing with it.

The rioters were lying in wait to ambush Orangemen returning to their homes in North Belfast after attending the main parade in Belfast city centre.

There were further disturbances in Rasharkin, Co Antrim, where three police officers were injured, as well as in Londonderry and Armagh, where a bomb exploded, causing no injuries.

About half a million Orangemen and women were involved in parades across the Province on Monday.

A senior Sinn Féin politician and former Provisional IRA leader blamed the Real IRA for provoking the violence in Belfast.

Gerry Kelly, a Sinn Féin junior minister in the power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive, said that a small number of dissident republicans from outside Ardoyne had stoked sectarian tensions and orchestrated the violence.

“The Real IRA, or whatever they may call themselves, and some other splinter organisations sent people over here with the sole aim to cause riots, to bring this further down into sectarianism,” he said.

Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay said of the rioters: “They displayed the worst possible face of Northern Ireland: a face of bigotry, sectarianism and intolerance that is not representative of the vast majority of people who have moved on and embraced a peaceful future.”

Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin, said that the Orange Order should consider re-routing a small number of contentious parades, including those that pass the Ardoyne.

“Why play into the hands of those who orchestrated the disturbances?” he said. “I would appeal to the Orangemen: they’re not giving a victory to anyone if they just take an alternative route to where they want to go.”

Father Gary Donegan, a priest in Ardoyne, said: “Myself and many people were looking at people last night that we’d never seen in the area before in our lives.

“It was as if people had been bussed into the area for this very purpose and that this was being very much orchestrated.”

Police promised a “rigorous investigation” to identify those who had taken part in the trouble.

Early yesterday morning police and Army bomb disposal experts were called to a security alert in Lurgan, Co Armagh. It was sparked by a suspicious object in a car that had been hijacked earlier but was declared a hoax. There was a similar incident in Strabane, Co Tyrone.

In Londonderry, 11 petrol bombs were thrown during disturbances, but there were no reports of any injuries or arrests.

Frankie Gallagher, a loyalist representative, said: “There’s a small element of people in the republican or Irish nationalist community who are recruiting young kids and they’re trying to create some sort of political movement.”

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