Leader calls for calm

LONDON — Rioters set a hijacked bus on fire and hurled gasoline bombs at police in Belfast in the fourth night of violence in a week in Northern Ireland, where Brexit has unsettled an uneasy political balance.

Youths threw projectiles and petrol bombs at police on Wednesday night in the Protestant Shankill road area, while rioters hurled objects in both directions over the concrete “peace wall” separating the Shankill road from a neighbouring Irish nationalist area.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the unrest, and Northern Ireland’s Belfast-based government was holding an emergency meeting on Thursday on the riots.

Mr Johnson appealed for calm, saying “the way to resolve differences is through dialogue, not violence or criminality”.

Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster, of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, and Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Irish nationalists Sinn Fein both condemned the disorder and attacks on police.

The recent violence, largely in pro-British loyalist areas, has flared amid rising tensions over post-Brexit trade rules for Northern Ireland and worsening relations between the parties in the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing Belfast government.

The latest disturbances followed unrest over the Easter long weekend in unionist areas in and around Belfast and Londonderry, also known as Derry, that saw cars set on fire and projectiles and gasoline bombs hurled at police officers.