A 15-year-old special needs pupil who was beaten by a gang in north Belfast at the weekend has been speaking about his ordeal.

The family of Roy Lillis, a Catholic, said doctors told them he was lucky not to have been left brain damaged.

It is understood the attack is being treated as sectarian.

The teenager was staying at a friend's house in Cliftonpark Avenue on Saturday night when he was woken by the sound of broken glass.

He remembers little of the attack, but he was beaten about the head and body with an iron bar and a stick.

I thought he was dead when I heard that he was critical

Matilda Lillis

"I stayed in my friend's house," he said.

"There was bit of a festival going on. I stayed there that night. I heard the windows getting broken.

"I ran out to see what it was and I chased a man away from the house. Then a big crowd came out and that's all I can remember after it.

"I was told there was about 20 or 30 of them. It was Protestants."

'Responding'

His mother, Matilda, said the last 24 hours watching her son in hospital had been a nightmare.

"I thought he was dead when I heard that he was critical," she said.

"When I seen him for the first time in the hospital, just lying there, not moving and not responding, I just thought he was gone.

"It's only took him last night to this morning to come round, to know who he was and where he was.

"We're lucky - more so than other people who have lost their children."

Stone-throwing

The police said they had made no arrests, but their investigations were continuing.

The attack took place after cars and houses were attacked in the Clifton Park Avenue area.

On Sunday, the front door of a house and a car were damaged in an attack at Twaddell Avenue .

There were also disturbances in the Ardoyne Road area of north Belfast.

Up to 200 people were involved in stone-throwing incidents in the Alliance Avenue and Glenbryn areas.