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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS