Police in Northern Ireland have used water cannon and dogs to contain fresh rioting in Belfast.
Armoured Land Rovers and officers with helmets and shields were deployed on Thursday night after crowds clashed at the Lanark Way interface that separates the nationalist Springfield Road from the loyalist Shankill Road.
Police used water cannon for the first time in six years after dozens of young people on the Springfield Road side ignored a warning to disperse and continued to throw stones, bottles and fireworks.
The gathering on the Shankill Road was smaller and less violent, marking a relative lull in loyalist violence after seven nights of unrest in loyalist areas across Northern Ireland.
The justice minister, Naomi Long, pleaded for an end to the violence. “More attacks on police, this time from nationalist youths,” she tweeted. “Utterly reckless and depressing to see more violence at interface areas tonight. My heart goes out to those living in the area who are living with this fear and disturbance. This needs to stop now, before lives are lost.”
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland secretary, was due to hold talks with political leaders and the chief constable, Simon Byrne, later on Friday.
He will attempt to build on political momentum from Thursday when the power-sharing executive and assembly at Stormont met to condemn the violence, which on the loyalist side has been fuelled by anger at the post-Brexit Irish Sea border and a decision to not prosecute Sinn Féin politicians who attended a large funeral for Bobby Storey, a former IRA commander, despite Covid lockdown restrictions.
Boris Johnson and his Irish counterpart, Micheál Martin, issued a joint appeal for calm on Thursday after speaking on the phone. A White House spokesperson added the Biden administration’s voice to appeals for calm.
Anonymous social media accounts professing to be from loyalist activists – they use the name of historic figures such as Edward Carson – have called for further gatherings this weekend. Many of the accounts have been set up in recent days and are believed to be fake, leaving the situation unclear.
Mainstream politicians have urged the Loyalist Communities Council, an umbrella group for paramilitary groups, to issue a statement condemning the violence and clarifying what if any role paramilitaries have played in the unrest.
Billy Hutchinson, a Belfast city councillor with the Progressive Unionist party (PUP), which is aligned with the Ulster Volunteer Force paramilitary group, expressed cautious optimism that the violence would ebb. “I’m hoping we’re over it and that people will see sense,” he told BBC Radio Ulster on Friday. “Violence doesn’t further the unionist cause.”
Simon Coveney, the Irish foreign minister, told the same programme that the Irish and British governments would work with the region’s political parties and power-sharing executive to stabilise the unrest.
“That leadership has got to come from political parties in Northern Ireland, with the executive as well, but certainly the governments need to be there to support them,” he said. “Whatever we can do as governments in Dublin and in London, we should be doing to support a calm and united message coming from politics on this island and across the UK.”