Policeman wounded in Northern Ireland shooting

BELFAST (Reuters) - A policeman was wounded in a shooting at a petrol station in north Belfast on Sunday evening, the police service of Northern Ireland said in a Twitter post. The BBC, citing an unidentified police source, reported that the officer was hit in the arm after a number of shots were fired. A police spokesman did not immediately return a call requesting details. Shootings of police officers in Northern Ireland have been relatively rare since a 1998 peace deal ended three decades of violence between Catholic Irish nationalists, opposed to British rule, and Protestant pro-British unionists. A prison officer died after a car bombing in Northern Ireland in March last year that was claimed by a group of militant nationalists opposed to the peace process. Northern Ireland is to hold regional elections on March 2 following the collapse of a coalition between Irish nationalists Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party. (Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Writing by Conor Humphries; Editing by Andrew Roche)