(ROUGH CUT ONLY - NO REPORTER NARRATION)<br/> <br />At least 29 police officers were injured when pro-British and Irish nationalist youths clashed in Belfast on Saturday (January 12) following another protest against the removal of the British flag from city hall.<br/> <br />Rioting started as the mainly Protestant protesters passed a Catholic area on their way home from a rally in central Belfast against the flag's removal. Police scrambled to separate crowds of youths who pelted each other with bricks and bottles.<br/> <br />The unrest over the past five weeks has been some of the most sustained in the British-ruled province since a 1998 peace deal ended 30 years of conflict between Catholic Irish nationalists seeking union with Ireland and Protestant loyalists determined to remain part of the United Kingdom.<br/> <br />Exposing a deep vein of discontent with the peace deal, loyalists have held nightly protests since councillors voted last month to end a century-old tradition of flying the British union flag every day over the city hall.<br/> <br />Loyalist politicians have joined their nationalist rivals in condemning the violence, but they have been unable to prevent groups of young men draped in British flags from clashing with police.<br/> <br />The protesters have complained that the removal of the flag was a step too far in the ebbing of loyalist dominance in the province, saying too many concessions had been given to Irish nationalists in a power-sharing government.
