Police in Northern Ireland say 17 officers were injured during a second night of anti-immigrant violence within the town of Ballymena, where rioters threw bricks, bottles, petrol bombs and fireworks and set several vehicles and houses on fire.
Police used water cannon and fired rubber bullets to disperse a crowd of several hundred people. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said Wednesday that the violence died down by about 1 a.m. local time (0000GMT).
Five people were arrested on suspicion of “riotous behavior.”
What sparked the violence?
Violence erupted Monday after a peaceful march to point out support for the family of the victim of an alleged sexual assault last weekend. Two 14-year-old boys have been charged.
The suspects haven’t been identified due to their age. They were supported in court by a Romanian interpreter.
After the march, a crowd of mostly young people set several houses on fire and pelted police with projectiles. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said 15 officers were injured that night.
There have been similar scenes after dark on Tuesday, in addition to small pockets of disorder in several other Northern Ireland towns.
Police said agitators on social media were helping fuel what Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson called “racist thuggery.”
On this image taken from PA Video of a vehicle on fire near Clonavon Terrace, in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, as people participate in a protest over an alleged sexual assault within the Co Antrim town, Tuesday June 10, 2025. (Niall Carson/PA via AP).
This image taken from PA Video shows riot police wearing armour and carrying shields at Clonavon Terrace, in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, as people participate in a protest over an alleged sexual assault within the Co Antrim town, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Niall Carson/PA via AP).
Some politicians said immigration had strained the town of about 30,000 some 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Belfast, long often called a bastion of hardline pro-British Loyalism.
Jim Allister, leader of the conservative party Traditional Unionist Voice, said “unchecked migration, which is beyond what the town can deal with, is a source of past and future tensions.”
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Some Romanians in Ballymena told Britain’s PA news agency they’d lived within the town for years and were shocked by the violence.
Several houses within the Clonavon Terrace area that was the main focus of the violence put up signs identifying their residents as British or Filipino in an apparent try and avoid being targeted.
Henderson said there was no evidence that Loyalist paramilitaries, who still hold sway over Protestant communities, were behind the disorder.
People participate in a protest over an alleged sexual assault within the Co Antrim town of Ballymena, Northern Ireland,, Tuesday June 10, 2025. (Niall Carson/PA via AP).
People participate in a protest over an alleged sexual assault within the Co Antrim town of Ballymena, Northern Ireland, Tuesday, June 10, 2025. (Niall Carson/PA via AP).
Emergency services work outside a house in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, as people protest over an alleged sexual assault within the Co Antrim town, Tuesday, June 10, 2025, and police used water cannons to disperse protesters engaged in serious disorder for a second night. (Niall Carson/PA via AP).
Has this happened before?
Northern Ireland has a protracted history of street disorder stretching back to tensions between the British unionist and Irish nationalist communities.
Though three a long time of violence often called “the Troubles” largely ended after a 1998 peace accord, tensions remain between those — largely Protestants — who see themselves as British and Irish nationalists, who’re mostly Catholic. In Belfast, “peace partitions” still separate working-class Protestant and Catholic areas.
Street rioters sporadically clash with police, and recently immigrants have turn out to be a goal.
Anti-immigrant violence erupted in Northern Ireland in addition to England last 12 months after three girls were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class within the northwest England town of Southport. Authorities said online misinformation wrongly identifying the U.K.-born teenage attacker as a migrant played an element in that violence.
Police condemned the newest violence and said they’d call in officers from England and Wales to bolster their response if needed.
All of the parties in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government issued a joint statement appealing for calm and urging people to reject “the divisive agenda being pursued by a minority of destructive, bad faith actors.”
On the alleged sexual assault, the statement added that “it’s paramount that the justice process is now allowed to take its course in order that this heinous crime will be robustly investigated. Those weaponizing the situation with the intention to sow racial tensions don’t care about seeing justice and don’t have anything to supply their communities but division and disorder.”
© 2025 The Canadian Press
