Dozens of people were arrested during anti-immigrant protests that took place in many cities of the United Kingdom on Saturday. According to the UK media, the protests staged by far-right forces against the backdrop of the murder of three children in Southport ended in some cases in clashes with law enforcement officers and looting.
Police in various counties said 20 people were arrested in Lancashire, 10 in Staffordshire, six in Liverpool, four in Kingston-upon-Hull and two teenagers in Harlepool. Several arrests were made in Bristol, where rioting continued late into the evening.
According to Sky News footage, a group of people looted a convenience store during the Manchester protests, while several other businesses, including a mobile phone shop, were looted in Liverpool. A car and a cafe were burned in Belfast, and several shops were smashed in Kingston-upon-Hull.
In Liverpool, bottles and cobblestones were thrown at police from the crowd, and some demonstrators used fire extinguishers. Two police officers were taken to hospital with suspected broken jaws and noses. In another incident, protesters knocked down and beat up a policeman on a motorcycle. The Daily Mail circulated photos of hooligans in Bristol throwing beer barrels at police cars.
Reason for protests
The protests in the UK come after an incident in the English town of Southport, where 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana attacked children with a knife during a dance workshop on July 29. The attacker was arrested immediately.
He was born in Cardiff, Wales, and lived in the village of Banks, near Southport. According to the Times, Rudakubana is an ethnic Rwandan and his family fled to the UK from genocide in their homeland. The victims of the attack were three girls aged six, seven and nine. Eight other children were injured, the condition of five of them was assessed as critical, but it was stabilized. In addition, a yoga teacher and a center employee were seriously injured.
According to the government, one of the reasons for the riots was information spread after the tragedy that the attacker was an asylum seeker.
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