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 in Northern Ireland sporadically come under attack when tensions rise in parts of the British region, 27 years after a peace deal ended three decades of sectarian bloodshed there.
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.
Calm was restored to Ballymena, located 45 kilometres (28 miles) from the capital Belfast, at around 0100 local time (0000 GMT), police said.
Officers in riot gear and driving armoured vans responded earlier with water cannon and non-lethal rounds, known as attenuated energy projectiles, 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.
Several cars were set on fire and one lay upside down in flames as police sirens blared throughout the town past midnight.
The first night of rioting on Monday saw four houses damaged by fire, and doors and windows smashed in other homes and businesses, in what police said was being investigated as racially motivated hate attacks. Fifteen officers were injured.
Hundreds of protesters had gathered in Ballymena earlier on Monday after two teenage boys 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.
Separate protests on Tuesday blocked off some roads in Belfast, another Reuters witness said. Police said they also dealt with sporadic disorder in the towns of Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus, as well as some incidents in north Belfast.
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 Benn said on X.
