British Prime Minister urges calm as Belfast protesters hijack bus and attack police

BELFAST (Reuters) – Crowds of youths in a pro-British area of ​​Belfast have set fire to a hijacked bus and attacked police with stones in the latest series of nocturnal outbreaks of violence that began last week.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “deeply concerned” about the violence, which injured dozens of police officers in recent days as protesters set fire to cars and hurled gasoline bombs at police.

The violence comes amid growing frustration among many in the pro-British unionist community at new trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom that resulted from Britain’s departure from the European Union.

The pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has also highlighted a police decision not to prosecute Irish nationalists Sinn Fein for a major funeral last year that violated COVID-19 regulations.

Sinn Fein, in turn, has blamed the DUP for fueling tensions with their fierce opposition to the new trade regulations and their call in recent days for the region’s police chief to resign.

Northern Ireland police have said some of the violence was influenced by “criminal elements” who helped orchestrate the attacks.

The violence on Wednesday took place near Shankill Road in west Belfast, near a so-called “wall of peace” separating the community from the Irish nationalist stronghold Falls Road, where groups of young people also gathered.

The walls and fences were built between the two communities to avoid clashes during three decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, which largely ended with a peace deal in 1998.

“I am very concerned about the scenes of violence in Northern Ireland,” Johnson wrote in a Twitter post. “The way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or crime.”

The leaders of Northern Ireland’s largest political parties, Sinn Fein and the DUP, both condemned the violence, noting in particular the bus hijacking and an attack on a photojournalist from the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.

“These actions do not represent union or loyalism. They embarrass Northern Ireland, ” DUP leader Arlene Foster wrote in a Twitter post that further described rivals Sinn Fein as “ the real lawbreakers. ”