Many pro-British unionists fiercely oppose the new trade barriers introduced between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK as part of Britain’s departure from the EU and have warned that their unease could lead to violence.
Political leaders, including Britain’s Northern Ireland minister, had appealed for calm earlier on Saturday but police said they attending reports of disorder in Newtownabbey on the northern outskirts of Belfast.
A video posted on Twitter by the Police Federation for Northern Ireland showed four masked individuals flinging petrol bombs from close range at an armoured police van, which they also kicked and punched.
A total of 15 officers were injured in the Sandy Row area of Belfast on Friday when a small local protest developed into a riot. Police said the rioters attacked them with masonry, metal rods, fireworks and manhole covers.
The injuries included burns, head wounds and a broken leg, resulting in the arrest and charging of seven people, two of them as young as 13 and 14. A total of 12 officers were also injured in the fifth straight night of rioting on Friday in Londonderry.
Other political parties blamed the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster on Saturday for stoking up tensions with their staunch opposition to the new trading arrangements.
“By their words and actions they have sent a very dangerous message to young people in loyalist areas,” Gerry Kelly, a lawmaker from the pro-Irish Sinn Fein party, which shares power in the devolved government with the DUP, said in a statement.
A DUP lawmaker, Christopher Stalford, said rioters were “acting out of frustration” after prosecutors opted not to charge any members of Sinn Fein last week for alleged breaches of Covid-19 restrictions.
The DUP have called for the head of the police force to resign over the issue.
The British-run region remains deeply split along sectarian lines, 23 years after a peace deal largely ended three decades of bloodshed. Many Catholic nationalists aspire to unification with Ireland while Protestant unionists want to stay in the UK.