British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has expressed deep concern by the violence, which has injured dozens of police officers in Belfast Northern Ireland in recent days.
The violence on Wednesday took place near the Shankill Road in west Belfast near a so-called “peace wall” dividing the community from the Irish nationalist stronghold of the Falls Road.
Crowds of youths in a pro-British area of Belfast set a hijacked bus on fire and attacked police with stones in the latest of a series of nightly outbreaks of violence that began last week.
The violence comes amid growing frustration among many at new trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom resulting from Britain’s exit from the European Union.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland has said some of the violence was influenced by what they call criminal elements who helped to orchestrate the attacks.
In a Twitter post Boris Johnson wrote that the way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality.
The leaders of Northern Ireland’s largest political parties Sinn Fein and the DUP both condemned the violence, pointing in particular to the bus hijacking and an attack on a photojournalist from the Belfast Telegraph newspaper.
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