Several British cops were injured Saturday amid ongoing violent clashes nationwide that erupted after three young girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in northwest England Monday.
Several police officers were harmed amid “serious disorder” in Liverpool’s city center, about 20 miles from the site of Monday’s heinous stabbing spree in the seaside town of Southport, Merseyside Police said.
There is “no place for this despicable behavior which disrupts the lives of members of the public who live in the city, or are visiting to enjoy the amenities the city has to offer,” the police force, which covers Liverpool and Southport, wrote on X.
In Hull, a city in northeast England, three police officers were injured and four people arrested amid the mayhem, which included demonstrators chucking bottles at protests.
Video posted on X shows hundreds gathered outside a shopping plaza in Hull, where rioters looted a shoe store before setting fire to the stolen supplies dumped outside the storefront, with a second blaze raging just a few hundred feet away.
Rioters also smashed the windows of the Royal Hotel, where riot police with dogs deployed to crack down on chaos, according to the Daily Express.
In Stoke-on-Trent in central England, bricks were thrown at police offices, while scuffles had been reported in cities including Belfast, Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham.
Newly-elected Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened an emergency meeting Saturday with senior ministers, where he said police had the government’s backing to crack down on the “extremists” who were attacking cops and attempting to “sow hate,” according to his office in No. 10 Downing Street.
There was “no excuse for violence” at the protests,” Starmer said.
Riots and unrest involving hundreds of protesters have rocked the nation in recent days following Monday’s stabbing spree, where three little girls — Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6 — were killed and nine others were injured.
The suspect arrested in connection to the attack, Axel Rudakubana, 17, was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Rwandan parents, but false rumors spread online that the killer was a radical Muslim immigrant, setting off a wave of riots and protests, including in Sunderland in northeast Friday night.
With Post wires
