A scheduled bus was stormed and set on fire last night in Belfast during the sixth consecutive night of violence in Northern Ireland. The vehicle was attacked in an area dividing nationalist and unionist communities, the Northern Ireland Police Service said. Police officers were also attacked with stone throwing, tires and rubbish bins were set on fire and a newspaper photographer was attacked.
The Northern Irish and British Prime Ministers, Arlene Foster e Boris Johnson, condemned the violence. “The way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or crime,” Johnson tweeted. Who said he was “deeply concerned” about the riots. The police believe that some criminal elements orchestrated the clashes, during which cars were set on fire and the police were targeted with stones and Molotov cocktails.
The anger of the Northern Irish unionists was sparked by the authorities’ decision not to take action against some politicians of the Sinn Fein, the Republican Catholic party once contiguous to the IRA, who had attended a funeral in violation of the restrictions against Covid-19. However, the discontent of the unionists over the protocol on the issue also contributes to the climate of tension Brexi, which includes checks at the sea border between England and Northern Ireland to avoid the rehabilitation of a customs barrier between Belfast and Dublin.
The new violence occurred near Shankill road, in the western sector of Belfast, near a “peace wall” that divides the Protestant community from the Catholic community in the Falls road area. The wall is one of the many barriers built during the “Troubles”, the thirty years of violence that bloodied Ireland until the “Good Friday” peace accords of 1998. The leader of Dup, the Northern Irish Unionist party, Arlene Foster, tweeted that such actions “do not represent unionism” and then attacked Sinn Fein’s rivals, calling them “the real outlaws”.
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