Two factors contributed to the rapid end to the conflict during this period; the first was the collapse of the northern IRA as a result of internment. The second was the outbreak of the Irish Civil War in the south, which diverted the IRA's attention from the Northern Ireland to the Free State, largely ending the violence in the former while increasing in the latter. The death toll in Northern Ireland between July 1920 and July 1922 was 557 men, women and children; 303 were Catholics, 172 Protestants and 82 members of the security forces. In Belfast, 236 people had been killed in the first months of 1922 but there was not a single sectarian murder in the city between 1923 and 1933 Northern Ireland was believed to have one of the lowest crime rates in Europe during this period.