FRI. JUNE 1, 2001: An explosive device exploded outside the RUC barracks in Sion Mills, Co Tyrone. A warning had been received and no one was injured.
It was reported that an SDLP member of the Stormont assembly, John Dallat from Co Derry, had received a death threat via a website on the internet.
MON. JUNE 4, 2001: A man was treated for head injuries after petrol bombs and missiles were thrown during fresh disturbances in Portadown, County Armagh. Loyalist youths pelted police with missiles, petrol bombs and fired catapults when they moved in several times to remove burning barriers placed across the Corcrain Road, not far from the scene of the Drumcree dispute. The RUC said a crowd of around 70 youths were involved in dismantling a bonfire prepared for use in July, spreading it across the road and setting the material alight. Officers were attacked each time they moved in to clear the road.
St Patrick’s Catholic Church at Ballyargan in Co Armagh was attacked by vandals who painted sectarian slogans on the walls and stained glass windows as well as damaging a headstone.
Trouble flared in Portadown, Co Armagh between loyalists and the RUC when the police were pelted with stones and bottles in the Corcrain Road area of the town.
A 130-year-old Presbyterian Church at New Mills outside Portadown was completely destroyed in an overnight fire which police said they were treating as suspicious.
WED. JUNE 6, 2001: A petrol bomb was hurled through the window of the Wayside Inn pub in Cloughmills, County Antrim, causing minor scorch damage to the seating area. No one was injured.
A haul of loyalist guns has been seized in Portadown. The weapons find came during a raid by the RUC on a business yard in the flashpoint County Armagh town. The RUC launched the search in the wake of two nights of loyalist petrol bomb attacks on the British Crown Forces.
Three men were arrested after a quantity of guns and ammunition were found by the RUC in Ballymena, Co Antrim.
A car belonging to a nationalist family was set alight and destroyed at Fairway in the centre of Larne.
A suspect device which was later declared by British Crown Forces to be "an elaborate hoax" was discovered at Lavey GAA club, Quarry Drive, Gulladull, Co Derry.
THURS. JUNE 7, 2001: The referendum on the Nice Treaty was defeated by 54% to 46%. The referendum to remove the death penalty was approved by 64% to 36% and the third 26-County referendum on an international criminal court was passed by 62% to 38%.
Two RUC men and a woman were shot at a polling station in Draperstown, Co Derry. All three were taken to hospital after the gun attack. Their injuries are not thought to be life threatening. The RUC returned fire with one shot.
FRI. JUNE 8, 2001: Two nationalist families living in Waterside area of Derry were attacked by a loyalist gunman. Both families have been attacked in the past.
A pipe bomb was thrown at the home of a nationalist family in Limavady, County Derry. The device exploded at the back of the house on Coolessan Walk. No one was injured.
The results of the Westminster election in the Occupied Six Counties were: UUP 6; DUP 5; Provos: 4; SDLP 3.
SUN. JUNE 10, 2001: The annual Wolfe Tone commemoration took place to Bodenstown Churchyard in Co Kildare.
MON. JUNE 11, 2001: St Bernard’s Catholic chapel in Glengormley on the outskirts of Belfast was burnt to the ground. The attack came when tension was high in the area because of a loyalist threat to picket a Cemetery Sunday Mass at Carnmoney.
TUES. JUNE 12, 2001: The LVF loyalist death squad were linked to a major explosives find in a derelict flat in a loyalist area of Newtownabbey, outside Belfast. A man was stabbed in the face when out walking in the Carrickhill area of Belfast. Two men jumped out of a car and attacked him.
Two shots were fired into the home of a nationalist family at Salla Avenue in Carrigfergus, Co Antrim.
WED. JUNE 13, 2001: A man had to receive hospital treatment after being attacked by two carloads of men in the Broadway area of west Belfast. He suffered a head wound, a deep cut to his arm and severE bruising.
Thousands of people were evacuated from Clonard monastery and surrounding areas in Belfast after a suspicious object was found in a drain. It was later declared a hoax.
A 21-year-old nationalist woman was forced to flee her home in Obins Drive, Portadown. Co Armagh following a spate of attacks from the nearby loyalist Corcrain estate.
THURS. JUNE 14, 2001: A nationalist mother-of-four, Linda McDonnell, was forced to flee her home in Delhi Street in the university area of Belfast following the last in a number of attacks and threats on her home. In this attack a brick was thrown through the window of a bedroom where her 11-year-old son Christopher was watching television.
FRI. JUNE 15, 2001: RUC in riot gear moved in when scuffles broke out as a "Tour of the North" loyalist parade passed the nationalist Ardoyne area.
Twenty-four men, all of who work at R Wright & Sons Coachworks, a Ballymena company owned by independent councillor William Wright, were charged at Ballymena magistrates court with storming the nationalist Fisherwick estate in the town.
SAT. JUNE 16, 2001: Trouble flared during an Orange Order parade which marched through a flashpoint area of north Belfast. Loyalist and nationalist crowds clashed last night as two lodges returned from the main "Tour of the North" march, which is largely seen as the beginning of the summer marching season. The main parade, consisting of up to 3000 Orangemen passed off without incident but skirmishes broke out as the ‘feeder parade’ passed the nationalist Ardoyne area on the way back to Ligoniel. The British Parades Commission ruling had banned the Orangemen from playing music as they passed the shops at Ardoyne.
SUN. JUNE 17, 2001: A crude explosive device was found in the grounds of the Russell Gaelic Union GAA club in Downpatrick, Co Down. The device, which was found hidden behind goal posts was found as crowds were dispersing after a match, was made safe.
MON. JUNE 18, 2001: The home of SDLP Councillor Martin Wilson was damaged in a pipe bomb attack on his home at Sallagh Park in Larne, Co Antrim. No one was injured. Two men were arrested in connection with the explosion. The pipe bomb badly damaged the reinforced front door of the house and shrapnel from the blast was blown across the street. After the explosion British police found another pipe bomb on the doorstep of Martin Wilson’s brothers house, directly opposite.
It was reported that nationalist postmen in south Belfast were transferred to other routes following loyalist death threats, including a warning to a nationalist driver that he would be shot if he ever returned to the Seymour Hill area of Dunmurry.
TUES. JUNE 19, 2001: Loyalists who were erecting UFF flags on lamp posts along Ardoyne Road, north Belfast, attacked a car which was being driven along the Ardoyne Road and was going to the Holy Cross Girl’s Primary School, a Nationalist school in a loyalist area. The driver suffered injuries and had his car damaged.
THURS. JUNE 21, 2001: During the night a nationalist girls school, Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School, about half a mile from the Holy Cross Primary School in the loyalist Ballysillan area was attacked by loyalists and set on fire.
Twenty-four RUC men were injured in gun and bomb attacks during the night. RUC Chief Superintendent Roger Maxwell said that the bulk of the attacks came from loyalist areas and that there was a degree of orchestration by loyalist death squads. The British police came under fire from petrol bombs, paint bombs and stones from large crowds of both Republican and loyalist youths in the troubled Ardoyne district.
Six blast bombs were hurled and shots fired at the police from the loyalist Glenbryn Park area. Families in Alliance Avenue in the nationalist Ardoyne area of Belfast were targeted in blast bomb attacks. Members of the military wing of the Provisionals held around 200 nationalists who wished to defend their homes in check. However, nationalist youth threw petrol bombs at the police from a rooftop at nearby Woodvale roundabout.
Eight rounds of the new "lethal" plastic bullet was fired by the RUC at nationalists in Ardoyne, hitting four people.
Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) Assembly member Billy Hutchinson said he had been injured by police when they forced loyalists back up the street in the latest disturbances. He sent on an official complaint to the Police Ombudsman about his treatment after going to hospital.
A number of RUC men were injured as trouble spread into the west of the city. In the Springfield Road area three RUC men were injured when attacked while dealing with rioters. One received head injuries when he was assaulted in the North Queen Street area, the RUC spokesman said.
Loyalists blocked the Crumlin Road with burning barricades and stone-throwing was reported on the Limestone Road and Carlisle Circus. Sporadic rioting took place in other parts of the city. Five RUC men were injured in clashes with nationalists at Springhill in west Belfast.
FRI. JUNE 22, 2001: An extra 1,600 British soldiers were sent to the Six Counties in preparation for the loyalist marching season, according to a spokesperson for the British Army. This will raise British troop levels to 15,200.
Explosive charges were dropped against Seán Paul Magee (21) and a 16-year-old juvenile who were arrested in Belfast city centre last December after the car in which they were travelling was stopped. Seán Magee spent six months on remand in custody and the juvenile nine weeks. Their solicitors said they intended to pursue the matter.
It was reported that the UFF were at the centre of the escalating violence against nationalist in north Belfast. Leading members of the Shankill "C" Company were said to be involved in rioting at the interface which divides the nationalist Ardoyne and loyalist Glenbryn areas. A number of shots were fired from Hopewell Crescent in the Lower Shankill area of Belfast.
SAT. JUNE 23, 2001: A nationalist man, John McCormick (25) was shot by a two-man loyalist death squad in front of his young children, niece and nephew and his partner Lynn McConnell, who is six months pregnant at his home in Loughinhill Park, in the Ballysally area of Coleraine, Co Derry. He died shortly afterwards in hospital. The RUC said loyalists carried out the murder.. There was a pipe bomb attack on their home three weeks ago and Lynn McConnell, who is a Protestant, said her partner had also seen men acting suspiciously near the house in the last couple of weeks.
David Trimble was re-elected leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in Belfast. He was unopposed.
An explosive device containing 64lbs of home-made explosives and a booster charge was found in a milk-churn close to the Fermanagh Border at Colman’s Island, Co Monaghan.
Whitehouse Presbyterian church on the Short Road was targeted in an arson attack, causing over £4,000 damage to the building.
SUN. JUNE 24, 2001: A double-barrelled shotgun, a revolver and ammunition were found buried in a pipe in a cemetery in Strabane, Co Tyrone.
Three controlled explosions were carried out on an abandoned van at the entrance to the Carnmoney Cemetery on Prince Charles Way in Newtownabbey, outside Belfast, where a Catholic prayer service was being held. The service was also picketed by adults and children carrying Union Jacks and Ulster flags.
MON. JUNE 25, 2001: The Alliance Party refused to back a Provisional Sinn Féin member for Lord Mayor of Belfast and Ulster Unionist Jim Rodgers was elected to the position.
Gary Smith, an associate of the Ulster Freedom Fighters’ leader Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, was sent back to jail after he was arrested at his home in Belfast’s Shankill Road district. John Reid, the British supreme in the Six Counties, said he took the decision to re-arrest Smith after receiving a report on him from Ronnie Flanagan, the Royal Ulster Constabulary chief constable. It is understood that Smith, who was released from Long Kesh prison in September 1999, has been linked by detectives to the ongoing unrest outside a Catholic primary school in north Belfast. He has been described as Adair’s "number two".
A loyalist gang of more than 20 broke through a peace-line gate which separates the loyalist Tiger’s Bay from the nationalist Duncairn Gardens in north Belfast, and attacked property with paint bombs, stones and other missiles.
Rioting broke out at the interface at the junction of Limestone Road and Halliday’s Road and in the nearby Parkside estate. Over 400 people were involved in the disturbances and houses in Clanchattan Street in the nationalist Newington area were stoned.
TUES. JUNE 26, 2001: Fresh riots flared on the streets of north Belfast. Up to several hundred people were involved in disturbances in a nationalist and loyalist interface area. A number of bottles were thrown and heavy stoning was also taking place at the junction near Halliday’s Road. The 400-strong crowd dispersed shortly after midnight.
St Mary’s on the Hill Catholic Church in the Glengormley area outside Belfast sustained minor damage to the roof and front porch after an arson attack.
Con Barratt (31), a nationalist man was injured after a shot was fired into the kitchen of the house at Rosapenna Street in the lower Oldpark area of north Belfast. He was treated in hospital for a bruised back, but later discharged. Three children, aged seven, 10 and 15 were in the house at time of the attack, along with five adults. The gunman scaled the peace wall which runs behind the property separating loyalist and nationalist communities. Local people said pipe bombs had been left nearby in recent nights, and windows were smashed.
WED. JUNE 27, 2001: The Dublin Administration renewed the draconian Offices Against the State (Amendment) 1998, due to expire at the end of June, for a further 12 months.
Two pipe-bombs were handed into Ballymena, Co Antrim RUC barracks by a member of the public.
It was reported that nationalist families were leaving their homes in the Ballysally area of Coleraine, Co Derry where nationalist John McCormick was killed by a loyalist death squad on June 24.
A pipe bomb was found in the back garden of a nationalist home in Alliance Avenue, in north Belfast.
THURS. JUNE 28, 2001: It was reported that loyalist death squads had perfected a new "sophisticated and more lethal" pipe bomb, the first of which had been handed into Ballymena RUC barracks on June 27.
FRI. JUNE 29, 2001: A nationalist woman and her daughter were forced to flee their home in Besshill Lane, Purdysburn, south Belfast after their car and house were daubed with sectarian graffiti.
The home of a young nationalist woman was attacked when a nail-bomb was thrown through a front window of her home at Upper Dunmurry lane in south Belfast, where she was asleep upstairs. It exploded and started a fire, causing damage to the living room.
A man and his two teenage children escaped injury when the front door of their home in Curlew Way in the loyalist Clooney estate in Derry was damaged in a pipe-bomb attack.
It was reported that pipe bombs and blast bombs have been used in 94 attacks on nationalists this year.
SAT. JUNE 30, 2001: Trouble flared during a contentious Orange march through the nationalist Whiterock area of west Belfast when bricks and stones were hurled over the peace-line from the loyalist Ainsworth area into the 1,000-strong nationalist crowd who had assembled to protest against the march.
David Trimble resigned as "First Minister" of the Stormont assembly because decommissioning had not taken place.
The home of a nationalist family at Deerpark Road in north Belfast was targeted by a loyalist death squad who threw a blast bomb, breaking windows and causing scorch damage.
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