Terror boss Stephen Matthews
Internet taunts are being blamed for four nights rioting in east Belfast.
Five police officers needed hospital treatment and a 15-year-old boy suffered a fractured skull during serious disturbances at the Short Strand interface during the week.
Bricks, fireworks, bottles and petrol bombs were hurled at police patrols as they moved in to break up angry confrontations involving an estimated 80 youths from both sides of the sectarian guide.
Security sources say the trouble involved a degree of organisation and are blaming a Facebook ‘game’ of dare.
Youths from opposing gangs have been making their way into rivals territory and posing for pics in front of murals or daubing provocative messages on walls in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
“It’s basically a challenge,” a community source told the Sunday World, “the other side then have to respond and it inevitably ends up in violence.”
The area has been quiet for the last two nights but community representatives are concerned that it is a pressure cooker ready to explode, and there are growing fears that the violence will be used by paramilitary organisations to increase tension.
The Short Strand interface has a long history of violence and was the scene of the some of the worst street trouble at the height of the flag dispute. Residents in the area say an exchange of missiles is a nightly occurrence.
But this week’s violence was on a different level.
Community representatives admit they are fighting a losing battle when it comes to keeping gangs of youths off the streets.
“There’s a gang culture going on,” said Sinn Fein councillor Niall O Donnghaile, top.
“You see similar activity in other areas of the city but because when it happens here there’s an interface that adds to the mix which makes it potentially very dangerous.”
He said what starts out as tensions between rival gangs quickly spirals into full on sectarian riots.
In the past loyalist paramilitaries have been blamed for orchestrating interface violence in the district and while there is no suggestions they are directly responsible for the current tensions, they have the ability to turn it off.
During the flag riots the UVF was pulling the strings but were able to bring it to an immediate halt when it suited them to do so.
“The UVF have total control in that area,” a community source on the lower Newtownards Road told us.
“They can turn trouble on and off like a tap. If they wanted to stop this rioting they could do it in the blink of an eye, that's how much influence they have.”
The area is controlled by the UVF’s east Belfast Brigadier Stephen Matthews and this week city councillor John Kyle, below, of the PUP which is seen as the paramilitary group’s political wing, conceded what starts as anti-social behaviour can be manipulated by “more sinister elements.”
“These things can start out as anti-social behaviour but can turn into rioting and being Northern Ireland it can fracture along sectarian lines.”
Meanwhile 15-year-old Jordan Else remains in a stable condition in hospital after suffering a double fracture to the skull in an unprovoked attack on Monday evening.
Jordan Else after the attack
His motionless body was found on the Albertbridge Road by passers-by who called the emergency services.
It emerged the teenager who lives in Nottingham was only in Belfast visited relatives and was returning from local shops when he was attacked.
The youngster’s father said the couple who found him thought he was dead.
“The ones who were with him said he was hit on the back of the head with the blunt end of a hatchet,” he said.
“There was a girl and a fella who came long and actually thought he was dead.”