[3] The violence was partly in reaction to increasing Irish Republican Army (IRA) attacks and was fuelled by rhetoric from Unionist politicians.
[9] Its new reserve police force, the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC), was almost wholly Protestant and some of its members carried out reprisal attacks on Catholics.
On 10 June, IRA volunteers shot three Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers on Belfast's Falls Road, fatally wounding Constable James Glover.
[14] On the night of 9–10 July, hours after the truce was announced, the RIC attempted to launch a police raid in the Catholic Lower Falls district of west Belfast.
Scouts alerted the IRA of the raid by blowing whistles, banging dustbin lids and flashing a red light.
On Raglan Street, a unit of about 14 IRA volunteers ambushed an armoured police truck, killing one officer and wounding at least two others.
A "loyalist mob, several thousand strong" attempted to storm the Falls district, carrying petrol and other flammable materials.
[17] The New York Times characterised the clashes as "a three-fold fight between Sinn Féin and Unionist snipers and Crown forces".
[5] A 13-year-old Catholic girl, Mary McGowan, was shot dead by USC officers firing from an armoured car as she crossed the road with her mother.
[21] The inquest into her death concluded that they had "deliberately" shot the girl and added: "In the interests of peace, Special Constabulary should not be allowed into localities of people of opposite denominations".
[21] Two Catholic fathers, James McGuinness and Daniel Hughes, were killed in separate incidents by loyalist snipers while rushing to bring their children home.
[22] The police returned to their barracks late on Sunday night, allegedly after a ceasefire had been agreed by telephone between a senior RIC officer and the commander of the IRA's Belfast Brigade, Roger McCorley.
On 11 July, the Commandant of the IRA's 2nd Northern Division, Eoin O'Duffy, was sent to Belfast by the organization's leadership in Dublin to liaise with the British authorities there and try to maintain the truce.
The peal of rifles could be heard on all sides, frenzied mobs at every street corner, terror-stricken people rushing for their lives, and ambulances carrying the dead and dying to hospitals.
"[25] There were no serious disturbances during the Orange Order's yearly 12 July marches, but sporadic violence resumed the following day, and by the end of the week, 28 people had been killed or fatally wounded in Belfast.
[26] O'Duffy set up headquarters in St Mary's Hall in Belfast city centre and made contact with British forces and the press.