Northern Irish rioters attack police, torch houses for second night

BALLYMENA (REUTERS): Hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in the Northern Irish town of Ballymena on Tuesday in the second successive night of disorder that followed a protest over an alleged sexual assault in the town.

Police said they were dealing with “serious disorder” in the town, which is about 45 km from the capital Belfast, and urged people to avoid the area.

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Officers in riot gear and driving armoured vans responded with water cannon and plastic baton rounds after being attacked by petrol bombs, scaffolding and rocks that rioters gathered by knocking down nearby walls, a Reuters witness said.

One house was burned out and a police officer vomited after leaving another in a different part of the town that rioters had attempted to set alight, the witness added.

A number of cars were set on fire and one lay upside down in flames as police sirens blared throughout the town past midnight.

Four houses were damaged by fire and windows and doors were smashed in other homes and businesses in the first night of rioting on Monday, in what police said they are investigating as racially-motivated hate attacks.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered in Ballymena earlier on Monday in response to a case involving two teenage boys who appeared in court that day, accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in the County Antrim town.

Local media reported that the charges were read to the teenagers via an interpreter.

Fifteen police officers were injured on Monday, with some requiring hospital treatment.

Separate protests on Tuesday had earlier blocked off some roads in Belfast, another Reuters witness said, but no unrest was reported in other parts of the British-run region.

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The British government and local politicians condemned the violence.

“The terrible scenes of civil disorder we have witnessed in Ballymena again this evening have no place in Northern Ireland,” Britain’s Northern Ireland Minister Hilary Been said on X.