How riots erupted in Northern Ireland after an alleged sex assault

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a day ago

Violence erupted on the streets of the Northern Irish town of Balleymena for a second night in a row this week.
WARNING: This story contains references to sexual assault.
Masked rioters clashed with police and set homes and cars on fire in the town, with authorities condemning the scenes on Monday and Tuesday, local time, as "mindless violence".
The violence was triggered by the alleged sexual assault of a young girl on Monday in the town, located not far from the Northern Ireland capital of Belfast.
Authorities have pleaded for calm to allow police to investigate the crime, which has stoked tension in communities which have been divided by sectarian violence in the past.
Here's what we know about the incident.
The community of Ballymena was rocked after news that a teenage girl was allegedly sexually assaulted in the town on Saturday evening.
Two 14-year-old boys appeared in court on Monday, charged with attacking her.
The BBC reported that their charges were read out to them via a Romanian interpreter, and they later entered not guilty pleas.
Following a peaceful march in support of the victim, a crowd of mostly young people set fire to several houses and pelted police with projectiles.
After dark on Monday and Tuesday, masked rioters clashed with police in Ballymena.
There were also reports of incidents in the towns of Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus, and in Belfast.
Police said posts on social media were helping fuel what Assistant Chief Constable Ryan Henderson called "racist thuggery."
At least 32 police officers have been injured since the violence began, authorities say.
Police in Northern Ireland sporadically come under attack whenever tensions rise in parts of the British region, 27 years after the Good Friday Agreement ended decades of violence.
Five people were arrested on suspicion of riotous behaviour on Tuesday, following one arrest there on Monday, police say.
Officers in riot gear and driving armoured vans responded on Tuesday 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.
Police are investigating after attacks on properties during the violence that saw four houses damaged by fire.
They say the attacks could be racially-motivated "hate crimes".
One Romanian resident told the Irish Times on Tuesday that she was putting a British flag on her front window in a bid to prevent being targeted.
Another door had a British and Filipino flag with a message saying "Filipino lives here", a photograph in The Belfast Telegraph showed.
Jim Allister, leader of the conservative party Traditional Unionist Voice, said "unchecked migration, which is beyond what the town can cope with, is a source of past and future tensions."
Northern Ireland has a long history of street disorder stretching back to tensions between the British unionist and Irish nationalist communities.
Though three decades of violence known as the Troubles largely ended after the 1998 peace accord, tensions remain between those — largely Protestants — who see themselves as British and Irish nationalists, who are mostly Catholic.
In Belfast, "peace walls" still separate working-class Protestant and Catholic areas.
Street protestors sometimes still clash with police when there are moments of tension.
Separately, anti-immigrant violence erupted in Northern Ireland, as well as England, last year after three girls were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in the north-west England town of Southport.
Authorities said online misinformation wrongly identifying the UK-born teenage attacker as a migrant played a part.
Police condemned the latest violence and said they would call in officers from England and Wales to bolster their response if needed.
All 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."
They also urged people to allow the justice process to "take its course so this heinous crime can be robustly investigated".
ABC/Reuters/AP