Rioters attacked a leisure centre hosting people fleeing what police called ‘racist thuggery’ in the town of Ballymena.
Riots have erupted for a third consecutive night in Northern Ireland, with police condemning the violence as “racist thuggery” that erupted following an alleged sexual assault.
A few dozen masked rioters in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena attacked police, but the unrest was on a smaller scale in the town on Wednesday night compared with previous days.
Youths threw rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at officers in riot gear as armoured vehicles blocked roads in the town. Police also deployed water cannon for the second night in a row, but the clashes were far smaller than the previous nights, when five people were arrested and more than 30 police officers were injured. Much of the crowd had left the streets before midnight.
Small pockets of violence also erupted in the town of Larne, located 30km (18 miles) west of Ballymena, where masked youths smashed the windows of a leisure centre before starting fires in the lobby, footage widely shared on social media showed.
Gordon Lyons, the communities minister in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, had earlier said a number of people seeking refuge from the anti-immigrant violence in Ballymena had been temporarily moved to the leisure centre.
Lyons’s post drew sharp criticism from other political parties for identifying the location where the families had taken shelter. Youths also set fires at a roundabout in the town of Newtownabbey, according to police, while debris was also set alight at a barricade in the town of Coleraine.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he “utterly condemns” the violence which had left 32 police officers injured after the second night of disturbances.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly appeared together on Wednesday to voice their condemnation.
O’Neill told reporters in Belfast: “It’s pure racism, there is no other way to dress it up” while Little-Pengelly described the scenes in Ballymena as “unacceptable thuggery”.
Racially motivated
Violence initially flared on Monday in Ballymena – a town of 30,000 people located 44km (28 miles) from the capital Belfast with a relatively large migrant population – after a peaceful vigil was held for a teenage girl who was the victim of an alleged sexual assault on Saturday.
Two 14-year-old boys accused of carrying out the attack appeared in court on Monday. Communicating in court via a Romanian interpreter, the pair denied the charges, according to local media reports.
Police said the trouble began when people in masks broke away from the vigil and began “build[ing] barricades, stockpiling missiles and attacking properties”.
Tensions remained high throughout Tuesday, with residents saying “foreigners” were being targeted. Two Filipino families fled their home in the town after their car was set on fire, the Reuters news agency reported.
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Jon Boutcher warned that the rioting “risks undermining” the criminal justice process in the sexual assault allegations.
Some Ballymena residents have begun marking their front doors to indicate their nationality to avoid attack, according to the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.
Northern Ireland Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson also said the violence was “clearly racially motivated” and “targeted at our minority ethnic community”.