UK PM Starmer to hold emergency meeting over far-right riots

AFP | London, United Kingdom

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com   

UK leader Keir Starmer is due to hold an emergency response meeting on Monday after more far-right riots broke out across England over the murder of three children last week.

The prime minister will chair a meeting bringing together ministers and the police to discuss how to quell the violence that first broke out in Southport, northwest England, on Tuesday.

Police have arrested hundreds of people in towns and cities nationwide, with anti-immigration demonstrators and rioters facing off against police and counter-protestors, including groups of Muslims.

The unrest follows last Monday's tragedy in Southport in which three young girls were killed and five more children critically injured during a knife attack as they attended a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Starmer on Sunday warned rioters they would "regret" participating in England's worst disorder in 13 years, while his interior minister Yvette Cooper told the BBC on Monday that "there will be a reckoning".

Police have blamed the violence on supporters and associated organisations of the English Defence League, an anti-Islam organisation founded 15 years ago whose supporters have been linked to football hooliganism.

Some of the worst scenes on Sunday broke out in Rotherham, northern England, where masked rioters smashed several windows at a hotel that has been used to house asylum seekers.

At least 10 officers were injured, including one who was knocked unconscious, said South Yorkshire Police.

There were also large scuffles in Bolton, north west England, and Middlesbrough, north east England, where mobs smashed windows of houses and cars, leading to 43 arrests.

Protesters there seized a camera from an AFP crew and broke it. The journalists were not injured.

Late Sunday, Staffordshire police said another hotel known to have sheltered asylum seekers was targeted near Birmingham.

"A large group of individuals" have been "throwing projectiles, smashing windows, starting fires and targeting police" at the hotel in the town of Tamworth, with one officer injured, said the statement.