More violence and more victims in Northern Ireland

Violence Shatters Ulster Peace Hopes

Soldiers guarding the scene of the attack

The three soldiers and two police officers were attacked in a mainly nationalist area, close to the so-called peace line separating Protestant and Catholic communities in North Belfast.

A white Ford Sierra with four men pulled up close to the patrol. Two of the gunmen emerged from the car and fired a round of twenty automatic rounds, then lobbed a homemade bomb.

The soldiers and police officers, one of them a woman, suffered arm and leg injuries which are said to be serious, but not life threatening.

Loyalists light bonfires to celebrate July 12th

Sarah Cullen reports from Belfast on the angry mood among Ulster Orangemen Dur: 3:58

Not far away a 14-year-old boy and a 18-year-old man were shot and lightly wounded on Friday evening as they watched loyalist bonfires burning ahead of the Protestant Orange Order parades throughout the province. The shots are said to have come from a nearby nationalist estate.

Elsewhere,the RUC reported that a home-made mortar device exploded on waste ground next to the helicopter pad at the RUC police station in Newtonhamilton, County Armagh. In the Suffolk area of Belfast, a bomb exploded near security forces.

In a coded message the IRA accepted responsibility for the bomb in the Suffolk area, giving rise to speculation that the INLA might be behind the attack on the RUC-Army patrol.

Unionist MP Cecil Walker blames the IRA

Chris Walker MP says some nationalists want to "create mayhem"

The Ulster Unionist MP for the area, Cecil Walker, blamed the IRA and said the attack was designed to heighten tensions again after the Orange Order's gesture to nationalists on parades. He said he was "very disappointed".