Rioters on Thursday night waged a running battle with police in Belfast — tossing Molotov cocktails, setting fires and dodging jets from water cannons as a week of unrest showed no sign of letting up.
Hundreds of boys and young men gathered from early evening in a western neighborhood in the Northern Ireland capital, which has been riven by violence over Brexit and domestic politics.
Masked and in hooded tops, they hurled rocks, bricks and glass bottles at police barricades where riot officers formed ranks with armored Land Rovers.
Photo: AFP
Fire bombs burst into flames in the street and fireworks were aimed into police formations, exploding and smothering their lines in thick smoke.
Behind riot shields and with batons drawn, police drove back the surging crowds late into the night, as locals peered out of their windows to witness the spectacle.
When one group tried to push a vandalized vehicle into the police barricades, a lumbering water cannon forced them away with powerful spraying jets.
A police loudhailer warned crowds to disperse or face arrest.
“Force may be used,” the female voice said.
Northern Ireland was the site of “The Troubles” sectarian conflict, which wound down in 1998 — but Brexit has been partially blamed for igniting old tensions.
The unrest started last week in the pro-UK unionist community, where tensions are high because of new post-Brexit rules some feel are dividing the region from Britain.
The pro-Ireland nationalist community has begun to respond in scenes like those on Thursday night.
Nationalist and unionist communities in Belfast are often separated by towering “peace walls” to guard against projectiles.
On Wednesday there were ugly scenes when warring groups from unionist and nationalist communities faced off at a gate in the peace wall between their neighborhoods.
The doors are etched with a slogan reading: “There was never a good war or a bad peace.”
The gates were pried open and rioters traded missiles in vicious confrontations.
“It’s deep rooted, it’s not just about Brexit although Brexit has done something as well obviously,” Belfast native Fiona McMahon said.
“We have been scuppered big time,” she said, voicing the sense of exasperation many here feel over Britain’s split from the EU.
The rising unrest has caused a political crisis in Northern Ireland, with the regional assembly recalled to address the violence.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Irish Taoiseach Micheal Martin and US President Joe Biden have all called for calm.
Packed crowds in India celebrating their cricket team’s victory ended in a deadly stampede on Wednesday, with 11 mainly young fans crushed to death, the local state’s chief minister said. Joyous cricket fans had come out to celebrate and welcome home their heroes, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, after they beat Punjab Kings in a roller-coaster Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket final on Tuesday night. However, the euphoria of the vast crowds in the southern tech city of Bengaluru ended in disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra calling it “absolutely heartrending.” Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said most of the deceased are young, with 11 dead
By 2027, Denmark would relocate its foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a 200-million-euro (US$228.6 million) agreement that has raised concerns among non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and residents, but which could serve as a model for the rest of the EU. The agreement, reached in 2022 and ratified by Kosovar lawmakers last year, provides for the reception of up to 300 foreign prisoners sentenced in Denmark. They must not have been convicted of terrorism or war crimes, or have a mental condition or terminal disease. Once their sentence is completed in Kosovan, they would be deported to their home country. In
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
LOST CONTACT: The mission carried payloads from Japan, the US and Taiwan’s National Central University, including a deep space radiation probe, ispace said Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the moon’s surface during its lunar touchdown attempt yesterday, marking another failure two years after its unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace as companies that have accomplished commercial landings amid a global race for the moon, which includes state-run missions from China and India. A successful mission would have made ispace the first company outside the US to achieve a moon landing. Resilience, ispace’s second lunar lander, could not decelerate fast enough as it approached the moon, and the company has
RSS