Archive June 12, 2025

Riots have erupted for a third consecutive night in Northern Ireland, with police condemning the violence as “racist thuggery” that erupted following an alleged sexual assault.

A few dozen masked rioters in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena attacked police, but the unrest was on a smaller scale in the town on Wednesday night compared with previous days.

Youths threw rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at officers in riot gear as armoured vehicles blocked roads in the town. Police also deployed water cannon for the second night in a row, but the clashes were far smaller than the previous nights, when five people were arrested and more than 30 police officers were injured. Much of the crowd had left the streets before midnight.

Small pockets of violence also erupted in the town of Larne, located 30km (18 miles) west of Ballymena, where masked youths smashed the windows of a leisure centre before starting fires in the lobby, footage widely shared on social media showed.

Gordon Lyons, the communities minister in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, had earlier said a number of people seeking refuge from the anti-immigrant violence in Ballymena had been temporarily moved to the leisure centre.

Lyons’s post drew sharp criticism from other political parties for identifying the location where the families had taken shelter. Youths also set fires at a roundabout in the town of Newtownabbey, according to police, while debris was also set alight at a barricade in the town of Coleraine.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he “utterly condemns” the violence which had left 32 police officers injured after the second night of disturbances.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill and Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly appeared together on Wednesday to voice their condemnation.

O’Neill told reporters in Belfast: “It’s pure racism, there is no other way to dress it up” while Little-Pengelly described the scenes in Ballymena as “unacceptable thuggery”.

Racially motivated

Violence initially flared on Monday in Ballymena – a town of 30,000 people located 44km (28 miles) from the capital Belfast with a relatively large migrant population – after a peaceful vigil was held for a teenage girl who was the victim of an alleged sexual assault on Saturday.

Two 14-year-old boys accused of carrying out the attack appeared in court on Monday. Communicating in court via a Romanian interpreter, the pair denied the charges, according to local media reports.

Police said the trouble began when people in masks broke away from the vigil and began “build[ing] barricades, stockpiling missiles and attacking properties”.

Tensions remained high throughout Tuesday, with residents saying “foreigners” were being targeted. Two Filipino families fled their home in the town after their car was set on fire, the Reuters news agency reported.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Jon Boutcher warned that the rioting “risks undermining” the criminal justice process in the sexual assault allegations.

Some Ballymena residents have begun marking their front doors to indicate their nationality to avoid attack, according to the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the United States and Israel-backed organisation established to supplant the aid work of the United Nations, has accused Hamas of killing five staff and wounding multiple others in an attack on a bus en route to a food distribution centre.

A bus carrying more than two dozen Palestinians working with the organisation was “brutally attacked” while travelling to a distribution centre west of Khan Younis in southern Gaza, the foundation said in a statement on Wednesday night.

While the organisation was still gathering facts, “at least” five people were killed and there were “multiple injuries”, the foundation said, adding there were fears that some of its staff had been taken captive.

“We condemn this heinous and deliberate attack in the strongest possible terms. These were aid workers. Humanitarians, brothers, sons, and friends, who were risking their lives every day to help others,” the foundation said.

“Our hearts are broken and our thoughts and prayers are with every victim, every family, and every person still unaccounted for.”

Hamas, which governs Gaza, did not immediately comment on the claims.

Hamas earlier this week denied that it had threatened the foundation after the organisation accused the Palestinian group of making “direct threats” against its operations.

The aid organisation, which is led by Johnnie Moore, an evangelical Christian who advised US President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, has been mired in controversy since beginning operations on May 27.

The UN and aid groups have boycotted the foundation over concerns that it does not meet basic humanitarian standards and is not independent of Israel.

Numerous Israeli attacks on Palestinians have taken place near the foundation’s distribution sites in Rafah and the Netzarim Corridor,

On Wednesday, 57 people were killed and more than 363 injured as they tried to access aid at the sites, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.

More than 220 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid since the foundation began operations, according to Gaza health authorities.

In its statement, the foundation, which on Saturday reported that it had been unable to distribute aid due to Hamas threats, said the attack “did not happen in a vacuum”.

“For days, Hamas has openly threatened our team, our aid workers, and the civilians who receive aid from us. These threats were met with silence,” the foundation said.

“Tonight the world must see this for what it is: an attack on humanity,” the foundation added. “We call on the international community to immediately condemn Hamas for this unprovoked attack and continued threat against our people simply trying to feed the Palestinian people.”