Riot police face off with protesters throwing bricks and petrol bombs in Newtownabbey, north Belfast, on Wednesday evening. Photo by Adam Vaughan/EPA
June 11 (UPI) -- A dozen police officers were injured and 16 people were arrested in a second night of anti-immigrant unrest in Northern Ireland sparked after a refugee allegedly attempted to murder a local man with a knife in a street attack in Belfast.
North of the city in Newtownabbey, protesters pelted police with bricks and petrol bombs and police fired back with water cannon and soft-nosed plastic bullets.
John Blair, the Alliance Party representative for the area in the Northern Ireland legislative assembly described it as "a mob on a rampage of violence and destruction."
There were also incidents of unrest in Belfast itself, where Blair said police rescued people trapped in their own homes, Derry, Northern Ireland's second largest city, and the university town of Coleraine -- but authorities said the disorder was on a smaller scale and confined to fewer areas than on Tuesday.
