A third man has been arrested by the PSNI in connection with the murder of a man from the Markets area of Belfast on Sunday night. Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor, reports.
Two others, including a senior republican, are facing police questioning about the stabbing of Mr Robert McCartney (33), a father of two.
Follow-up police searches in nearby nationalist areas on Monday and yesterday led to street disturbances in Upper Stanfield Street, said by residents there to be the worst in years.
The murder, the police response and the violence have sparked a flurry of allegations. Sinn Féin accused the police of heavy-handed old-style RUC tactics against a nationalist enclave.
Unionists charge republicans with kicking up a fuss and orchestrating street disturbances to provide a smokescreen for a paramilitary murder which is causing further turbulence in an already charged political atmosphere after the Northern Bank robbery.
Mr McCartney had been drinking at Magennis's Whiskey Café in the city centre on Sunday with two friends when a dispute erupted involving a woman, according to a local source.
"The row may have happened when a woman took offence when none was intended," one source said.
Two other men in the bar, one of them a senior republican, sent for republican paramilitary figures to bring weapons to the bar "to deal with" Mr McCartney and his drinking friends. Both these men are now understood to be in police detention.
Sources say the dispute was later resumed on the pavement outside the bar, and Mr McCartney was fatally wounded with a knife. One of his attackers was also injured and received treatment at the Ulster Hospital, Dundonald, where he was arrested.
Other members of the five-man group involved in the stabbing, had attended a Bloody Sunday anniversary commemoration in Derry earlier that day and may have had drink taken by the time they arrived back in Belfast.
Police yesterday carried out forensic investigations in the Markets and Short Strand areas and took away a white Ford car for further examination. Officers carrying out the searches came under attack from stone-throwers, and several were hurt and police vehicles damaged.
Mr Alex Maskey of Sinn Féin, an Assembly member for South Belfast, denounced the PSNI.
"It appears that the PSNI is using [ the] tragic stabbing incident as an excuse to disrupt life within this community, and the scale and approach of their operation are completely unacceptable and unjustifiable," he said.
Mr Sammy Wilson of the DUP said: "IRA-Sinn Féin are struggling desperately to minimise the damage to their image after the Markets murder of Rab McCartney at the weekend.
"They have been stung by the public outrage in the Short Strand where friends and family of the murdered man have openly confronted IRA/Sinn Féin representatives in the street, accusing the IRA of murdering Mr McCartney."
Sir Reg Empey of the UUP said Sinn Féin's response was "to reject decency and instead obfuscate, blame others and whip up tensions to protect the guilty".