Disorder spreads including fire at leisure centre in Northern Ireland

12/6/2025 6:13

Public

disorder broke out in different parts of Northern Ireland for

the third successive night on Wednesday, as rioters attacked

police with petrol bombs in the main flashpoint of Ballymena and

a fire was started at a leisure centre in the town of Larne.



Hundreds of masked rioters injured police and set homes and

cars on fire in the town of Ballymena, 45 kilometres (28 miles)

from Belfast, during the previous two nights in what police

condemned as "racist thuggery."



Riot police and armoured vans blocked roads in Ballymena on

Wednesday evening as a crowd of hundreds watched on. About two

dozen masked youths threw some rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs

at police, a Reuters witness said.



Police warned the crowd to disperse immediately and deployed

water cannon against them for the second successive night.



Riot police were also in Larne where masked youths smashed

the leisure centre's windows before starting fires in the lobby,

BBC footage showed.



Swimming classes were taking place when bricks were thrown

through the windows and staff had to barricade themselves in

before running out the back door, a local Alliance Party

lawmaker, Danny Donnelly, told the BBC.



"There is absolutely no excuse for what has taken place in

Larne and it must be condemned," Northern Ireland's Communities

Minister Gordon Lyons, a Democratic Unionist Party

representative for the area, told Cool FM radio.



Police said youths were setting fires at a roundabout in the

town of Newtownabbey, a flashpoint for sectarian violence that

sporadically flares up in the British-run region 27 years after

a peace deal largely ended three decades of bloodshed.



Debris was also set alight at a barricade in Coleraine, the

Belfast Telegraph reported.



The violence initially erupted after two 14-year-old boys

were arrested and appeared in court on Monday, accused of a

serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in Ballymena.



The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the

boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied the charge,

the BBC reported. Police are investigating the damaging of

properties in Ballymena, which has a relatively large migrant

population, as racially-motivated hate crimes.



Two Filipino families told Reuters they fled their home in

the town on Tuesday night after fearing for their safety when

their car was set on fire outside the house.



The British and Irish governments as well as local

politicians have condemned the violence.