AFP
A police officer walks behind a police vehicle with flames leaping up the rear after violence broke out in Newtownabbey, north of Belfast in Northern Ireland on Saturday.
Police and politicians in Northern Ireland appealed for calm on Monday after a third night of violence that saw Protestant youths start fires and pelt officers with bricks and gasoline bombs.
The flareups come amid rising tensions over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland and worsening relations between the parties in the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing Belfast government.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said officers were attacked in Londonderry on Sunday night, and there was also unrest in two pro-British unionist areas near Belfast.
Police said most of those involved were teenagers.
Chief Superintendent Darrin Jones condemned the “senseless and reckless criminal behavior that (does) nothing but cause damage to the community.”
The disturbances followed unrest on Friday and Saturday in unionist areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, that saw cars set on fire and projectiles and gasoline bombs hurled at police officers. Police said 27 officers were injured, and eight people have been charged, the youngest a boy of 13.
Brexit has shaken the delicate 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 deal has imposed customs and border checks on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the Kingdom.
The arrangement was designed to avoid checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland, an EU member, because an open Irish border has helped underpin the peace process built on the 1998 Good Friday accord which ended decades of violence.
The main unionist parties have demanded the resignation of Northern Ireland’s police chief over the controversy, claiming he has lost the confidence of their community.
Mark Lindsay, chairman of the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, said the “political atmosphere” was being used as an excuse for violence, orchestrated by banned paramilitary groups.
“Older, more sinister, elements use the youth and use children … to achieve their aims,” Lindsay said.
(Agencies)