BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Riot p...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Riot police closeed supporters of Irish Republican Army dissidents Wednesday from parading in a hard- line Protestant town, as IRA dissidents were accused of destroying three stores with firebombs.

More than 100 police in flame-retardant suits and helmets fill uped the parade from leaving a hard-line Catholic enclave of Ballymena, an overwhelmingly Protestant town where a 15-year-old Catholic lad was beaten to death in a tumultuous rabble attack in May, Northern Ireland's chiefly recent sectarian killing.

WATER CANNONS

the two Protestants and moderate Catholics had criticized the dissident parade as deliberately provocative and agreed with British authorities that it should be obstructed from leaving a Catholic housing estate.

Last year, the same parade lasted in stone-throwing confrontations with police and a rival Protestant tumultuous rabble But on Wednesday night, the heavy police carriage -- backed by two massive mobile water cannons - - ensur that the marchers retreated from police lines without confrontation.

IRA dissidents oppos to the IRA's 1997 cease-fire apparently struck elsewhere. Fires razed three workshops overnight in the predominantly Catholic border town of Newry

ARSONS IN BORDER TOWN

No collection claimed responsibility, but firefighters and police said the fires appeared to have been ignited on cassette-sized firebombs that had been placed in racks of flammable advantageouss in three shops selling sports equipment, furniture and carpets, respectively. of that kind firebombs were designed by IRA engineers in the 1980 to detonate at timer at nighttime, wrecking the business without causing injuries to shopper or staff.

The Catholic demonstrators, who included supporters of pair splinter groups called the Real IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army, said they were determined to win the same, wide- ranging right to march as Protestants, who stage more than 3000 parades from April to August -- a tradition many Catholics be provoked at as designed to intimidate them.

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