BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) – Rioters set fire to a hijacked bus and planted petrol bombs on Belfast police in at least the fourth night of serious violence in a week in Northern Ireland, where Brexit broke out an awkward political balance.
The youths threw projectiles and petrol bombs at police on Wednesday night in the Shankill Road Protestant area, as rioters lobbed bricks, fireworks and petrol bombs in both directions over the concrete “peace wall” that separates Shankill Road from a neighboring Irish nationalist area.
Assistant Chief of Police for Northern Ireland Jonathan Roberts said several hundred people had gathered on both sides of a walled gate, where “crowds … were committing serious crimes, both attacking the police and attacking to each other ”.
He said a total of 55 police officers were injured during several nights of rioting.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has condemned the unrest, and the Northern Ireland government in Belfast is holding an emergency meeting on riots on Thursday.
Johnson called for calm, saying that “the way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or crime.” The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Arlene Foster, of the pro-British Unionist Party, and Deputy Prime Minister Michelle O’Neill, the Irish nationalists of Sinn Fein, condemned both the disorder and the attacks on the police.
Recent violence, largely in pro-British loyalist areas, has erupted amid growing tensions over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland and worsening relations between parties in the Protestant Catholic power-sharing government in Belfast.
The latest riots followed the long Easter weekend riots in unionist areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, which saw cars set on fire and projectiles and petrol bombs thrown at police officers.
Authorities accused outlawed paramilitary groups of inciting young people to wreak havoc.
“We saw young people participating in serious disorders and committing serious crimes and they were supported and encouraged, and the actions were orchestrated by adults at certain times,” said Roberts, the chief police officer.
Britain’s economic split from the European Union at the end of 2020 has upset the political balance in Northern Ireland, a part of the UK where some people identify as British and some as Irish.
A new UK-EU trade agreement has imposed customs and border controls on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom The agreement was designed to avoid controls between Northern Ireland and Ireland, a member of the EU, because a border The Irish Open has helped ground the peace process built on the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.
The agreement ended decades of violence involving Irish Republicans, British loyalists and British armed forces in which more than 3,000 people died. But unionists say new controls represent a new border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK
Unionists are also outraged by police’s decision not to prosecute Sinn Fein politicians who attended the funeral of a former commander of the Irish Republican Army in June. Bobby Storey’s funeral has attracted a large crowd, despite coronavirus rules banning mass gatherings.
Major unionist parties have called for the resignation of the Northern Ireland police chief over controversy, saying he has lost confidence in their community.
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Lawless reported from London.