East Belfast residents stage protest
Loyalist residents have held a peaceful protest at an east Belfast interface on Thursday to raise awareness of what they claim is a rising number of attacks on their homes.
Around 100 people who live in the Lower Newtownards Road turned out at 5pm for the hour-long demonstration.
They state that houses on Duke and Susan Street have been under sustained attack over the summer, and the missiles are coming from nationalist Bryson Street.
Wheelchair user Chris Maneely has lived in the area for a year.
“My house has been getting attacked fairly regularly, two or three times a week with bottles, stones, bricks and rocks,” he said.
“It’s been getting worse and worse in the past two weeks and I’ve phoned the police almost every night.
“I live alone, so there’s no one there to help me clean up the mess, so my family have to come round and pick it up because me in a wheelchair with tyres, picking up bits of glass bottle isn’t going to work that well.”
Community representatives from the Short Strand area told UTV they were very surprised by these claims.
They said they are not aware of any incidents and they are continuing to work to defuse tensions in the area.
Police have confirmed that they are carrying a robust investigation into a number of incidents in the area.
Both sides say there needs to be much greater work done in relation to security measures.
