Northern Ireland leisure centre hosting immigrants attacked on third night of violence

By Ben Makori

LARNE, Northern Ireland (Reuters) -Masked youths in Northern Ireland on Wednesday set fire to a leisure centre that had been sheltering migrant families, but a third night of anti-immigrant violence was smaller in scale in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena.

Violence first flared on Monday after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town. The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied the charge, the BBC reported.

In the most intense violence on Tuesday, hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Ballymena, in what police condemned as "racist thuggery."

On Wednesday, a smaller crowd in the town threw rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, who responded with water cannon.

Nine officers were injured, none seriously, bringing to 41 the number hurt since the violence began, police said in a statement. They added that a hatchet was thrown at police lines during the disorder.

But 30 kilometers east in Larne, masked youths smashed windows and started fires in the lobby of a leisure centre where families whose homes were attacked in Ballymena had been briefly moved, officials said.

Women and children were taking part in swimming and exercise classes when the attack began and had to be evacuated through the fire exit, said a woman who was in the centre at the time.

The crowd was acting "like rabid animals," said the woman, who declined to give her name. She said she felt "frightened and intimidated."

Justice Minister Naomi Long said the attack was "completely unjustified and unjustifiable". Finance Minister John O'Dowd described the attackers as "racist thugs."

The immigrant families had been moved by the time of the attack but rumours were spreading in the town that the leisure centre was to be used to permanently house people, Northern Ireland's Communities Minister Gordon Lyons told the BBC.

Lyons was widely criticised for posting on Facebook that a number of people had been temporarily moved to the leisure centre. Lyons condemned the attacks on the centre as "despicable" and said he was trying to quell the rumours.

Police are investigating the damaging of properties on Monday and Tuesday in Ballymena, a town of 30,000 that has a relatively large migrant population, as racially-motivated hate crimes.

Three teenagers have been charged with riot over Tuesday's violence and six more people were arrested, police said.

Two Filipino families told Reuters they fled their home in Ballymena after fearing for their safety when their car was set on fire outside the house.

"This kind of behavior is ... deeply damaging. It's very frightening, and it needs to stop," Britain's minister for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn told the BBC.

Petrol bombs were thrown at officers in Coleraine, where police said they also received reports that a bus had been attacked, bins set alight on train tracks and were investigating a fire to nearby business premises.

Police said youths also set fires at a roundabout in the town of Newtownabbey, a flashpoint for sectarian violence that sporadically flares up in the British-run region 27 years after a peace deal largely ended three decades of bloodshed.

Debris was also set alight at a barricade in Coleraine, the Belfast Telegraph reported.

The British and Irish governments as well as local politicians have condemned the violence.

(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in BALLYMENA; Writing by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Toby Chopra)