World News

By Jekaterina Golubkova

June 15 (Reuters) – Thirteen people were injured and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, a symbol of Ukrainian spiritual and cultural history, caught fire following a major Russian air attack on the Ukrainian capital, authorities said early on Monday, urging residents to take shelter.

The air attack damaged electricity lines and left 140,000 Kyiv residents without power, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app, adding that some houses and cars also caught fire after being hit by drone debris.

The central Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was seriously damaged in a direct attack, Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the capital’s military administration, said in a separate Telegram post. 

“A brutal assault on our people and our heritage. This is the true face of Russia’s Orthodox values,” Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on X, with her post showing the monastery buildings in flames.

The city was under a massive missile attack, with a high-rise apartment building also on fire, according Kyiv authorities.

Drones continue to attack Kyiv from different directions, Ukraine’s Air Force said on Telegram, with explosions heard in the city, a Reuters witness said.

Neighbouring Poland, a European Union and a NATO member, has scrambled its fighter jets and put ground-based air defence systems and radar reconnaissance on a state of readiness, Poland’s Armed Forces said in a post on X.

Most of Ukraine’s territory was under air raid warnings in the early hours of Monday.

Five emergency service rescues were killed and at least another five injured after a second Russian strike hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second biggest city, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Telegram, with attacks also in the region of Dnipro, according to social media posts by local authorities.

Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.

Ukraine has recently intensified attacks on Russian industrial and energy facilities, as it tries to deprive Moscow from revenues to bring the end to the war closer.

The latest strikes come after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday he had spoken to U.S. President Donald Trump and discussed efforts to achieve an end to the more than four-year war, ahead of a G7 meeting in France this week.

Trump told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday that ending the conflict in Ukraine was vital and he was ready to help, the Kremlin said.

Progress towards a peace agreement in Ukraine has been slow, with U.S. officials and mediators concentrating on the conflict in the Middle East. U.S. and Iranian officials said on Sunday they had agreed on a peace framework to end their war, with the pact expected to be officially signed on Friday in Switzerland.

(Reporting by Jekaterīna Golubkova in Tokyo; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Lincoln Feast and Kim Coghill)

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Australian Girl Killed After Pakistani Police Mistake Family Car for Robbers’ Vehicle 

[ISLAMABAD] A 9-year-old Australian girl was killed and two family members were wounded in Chakwal, Pakistan, after Crime Control Department personnel allegedly opened fire on their vehicle in a case officials described as mistaken identity during the response to an armed robbery. 

Hania Ahmed, a Pakistani Australian child from Perth, was traveling with her family in Punjab province when police allegedly mistook their rented car for a vehicle used by robbery suspects. Chakwal is located about 62 miles southwest of Islamabad. 

According to information received by The Media Line, Hania’s family had arrived in Pakistan only days earlier after performing Hajj. Her father, Adeel Ahmed, 39, is originally from Dhudial, a town in Chakwal district, and moved to Australia about two decades ago. He studied there, earned a degree in civil engineering, and settled in Australia with his wife, Dr. Sidra Khan, and their children, Affan Ahmed and Hania Ahmed. 

Hania was traveling with her father and brother to visit her maternal grandfather when the shooting occurred. Her grandfather is reportedly a retired colonel in the Pakistan Army. 

Initial accounts indicate that the family had just been robbed at gunpoint by two armed men who took jewelry from them. As the family tried to leave in the rented vehicle, Crime Control Department personnel allegedly confused their car with that of the fleeing suspects and opened fire. 

Hania was fatally wounded. Her father and younger brother were seriously injured and underwent surgery. Khan was not in the vehicle at the time and was unharmed. 

Police have arrested the official accused of opening fire and registered a murder case against him. Authorities have also formed a Joint Investigation Team to examine the circumstances of the shooting. Police later said the two men allegedly involved in the robbery were killed during an encounter. 

The killing has caused public anger in Pakistan and Australia, where the family lived. Senior police officials in Pakistan have described the incident as a tragic case of mistaken identity and said the family would receive justice through a transparent investigation. 

The case has also drawn attention to Pakistan’s police practices, including the use of force during criminal pursuits and the accountability mechanisms applied after civilian deaths. Rights groups in Pakistan have long raised concerns about police shootings, custodial abuse, and encounter killings, while authorities have repeatedly said reforms are needed to improve training and public trust. 

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it was assisting the family. 

“We send our deepest condolences to the family at this difficult time,” a department spokesperson said. 

The department said it was providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian national who was killed and to two Australians injured in the incident. 

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LONDON (AP) — Armed British forces boarded and detained a sanctioned tanker Sunday that is suspected of being part of the Russian “shadow fleet,” shipping oil in violation of international sanctions over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Sunday.

Royal Marine commandos rappelled from helicopters onto the vessel, the Smyrtos, in the English Channel, in what the country’s Defense Ministry called “the first U.K.-led operation of its kind.”

The vessel will be held and monitored off the south coast of England for investigation, according to the Defense Ministry. The operation was carried out “in close coordination” with French authorities, who have previously intercepted a number of vessels linked to the “shadow fleet.”

“This operation delivers yet another blow to Russia and reminds those fueling Putin’s war in Ukraine that they cannot hide,” Starmer said.

Russia is believed to be using a fleet of hundreds of ships to evade sanctions over its war against Ukraine.

Sailing under a Cameroon flag, the Smyrtos left the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on June 5 destined for Port Said, Egypt, according to the MarineTraffic website.

U.K. authorities said that such operations were “directly bearing down on the resources sustaining Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and reducing its capacity to threaten security across Europe and beyond.”

Ukraine President Voldymyr Zelenskyy thanked Starmer and the British people for their “principled resolve.”

“It was Russia’s hubris, fueled by high oil and gas revenues, that paved the way for this war, and every decision by partners that deprives Russia of money also limits the war itself,” Zelenskyy said on X.

“Europe urgently needs to take legislative steps to enable not only the detention of tankers and restrictions on oil shipments, but also the confiscation of the oil they carry.”

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par Maria Tsvetkova et Ed Ou

NEW YORK, 14 juin (Reuters) – Un bus de la Coupe du monde de football a été incendié et un adolescent a été blessé par balle dans la nuit de samedi à dimanche après des débordements survenus dans le centre de Manhattan à la suite de la victoire des Knicks de New York en finale de NBA face aux Spurs de San Antonio.

Des supporters ont allumé des feux d’artifice et lancé des grenades fumigènes après avoir quitté des bars bondés et occupé des espaces en plein air, scandant “Knicks in five !” en référence au match cinq des finales de NBA remporté (94-90) par son équipe face au Spurs pour mener au total la série 4-1.

C’est le premier sacre des Knicks depuis le titre de 1973, et seulement leur troisième participation dans la série des finales après les défaites de 1994 et 1999 face aux Houston Rockets et aux San Antonio Spurs, dont ils pris leur revanche samedi soir.

Vers 2 heures du matin, un jeune de 17 ans a été blessé par balle au pied lors des célébrations à Times Square, a déclaré un policier new-yorkais à Reuters. Trois suspects ont été placés en garde à vue, a-t-il ajouté.

Alors que les célébrations se prolongeaient dans la nuit, des centaines de personnes, pour la plupart des jeunes, ont pris d’assaut un convoi d’une quinzaine de navettes à Times Square après que celles-ci eurent transporté des supporters de football depuis le premier match de la Coupe du monde de football disputé dans la région de New York entre le Brésil et le Maroc, qui s’est soldé par un match nul (1-1).

Certains d’entre eux ont grimpé sur le toit des bus, sont entrés à l’intérieur et se sont assis aux places réservées aux conducteurs. L’un de ces bus scolaires jaunes, loués par la municipalité pour permettre le transport des supporters de football, a été incendié, raconte un journaliste de Reuters. Au moins trois autres navettes ont été également gravement endommagées.

Un vélo a été hissé sur le toit d’un bus et des supporters de l’équipe de football brésilienne ont rejoint les fans des Knicks sur le toit d’un bus, agitant leur drapeau national. Un homme au visage ensanglanté a traversé la foule, mais Reuters n’a pas pu déterminer la cause de sa blessure.

“Ils expriment leur joie, de manière un peu violente, mais c’est comme ça”, a déclaré Youssef Sabbr, un Canadien de 49 ans d’origine marocaine, qui était descendu d’un des bus de la Coupe du monde avant qu’il ne soit encerclé par la foule.

“C’est ce qui se passe partout dans le monde quand une équipe gagne”, a-t-il noté.

La police a bouclé certaines rues et, après s’être retenue pendant environ deux heures, des agents en tenue anti-émeute sont intervenus, prenant notamment en chasse des supporters dans les rues.

Des officiers de police à cheval ont également repoussé la foule, dégageant les rues autour du Madison Square Garden, le stade des Knicks.

(Reportage bureaux de Reuters; rédigé par Phil Stewart et Kim Coghill; version française Claude Chendjou)

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June 14 (Reuters) – The Israeli military said on Sunday that Hezbollah launched three projectiles towards northern Israeli communities in what it described as a blatant ceasefire violation.

The projectiles fell near the communities of Shomera and Shlomi, the military added, saying this is in addition to two projectiles that crossed into the territory over the weekend.

(Reporting by Nayera Abdallah and Eman AbouhassiraEditing by Tomasz Janowski)

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ISLAMABAD (AP) — The Israeli military announced Sunday it launched strikes on Beirut targeting Hezbollah infrastructure. Smoke could be seen rising over the Lebanese capital.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes were in response to Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel.

When Israel last struck the Beirut suburbs a week ago, Iran responded with strikes on Israel.

Tehran, which is Hezbollah’s main backer, has insisted that any U.S.-Iran ceasefire deal must also include an end to Israeli strikes in Lebanon. Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel on March 2, two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, sparking war in the Middle East.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Iran and the U.S. inched closer to a deal to end the Iran war, as Qatari mediators traveled to Tehran on Sunday to finalize the agreement, according to two regional officials.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, expressed cautious optimism that the U.S. and Iran were finally approaching an agreement that could halt hostilities that have killed thousands of people and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure has thrown world markets into disarray.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Saturday that the deal would be signed on Sunday, while Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said it could happen in the coming days. Trump said that the Strait of Hormuz would open immediately after the signing.

The deal is expected to be signed electronically, without an in-person ceremony, though it’s unclear when or how the signing will take place.

The deal does not solve the thorniest issues between the U.S. and Iran, including Iran’s nuclear program or its frozen assets, but offers a 60-day framework for technical discussions on those issues, according to Pakistani and regional officials familiar with the ongoing negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The officials described Pakistan’s monthslong effort leading the negotiations, struggling to keep both sides from walking out of the room and a total collapse of the negotiations on multiple occasions.

Under the current deal being discussed, U.S. and Israel appear to have fallen short of their original goals of destroying Iran’s missile and nuclear programs and ending its support for proxies. It is not clear how the deal will address these issues, or if they will be part of the final agreement.

Meanwhile, Trump was expected to discuss demining the Strait of Hormuz during the Group of Seven summit that starts Monday. The waterway is crucial to significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products like fertilizer, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.

The apparent breakthrough came after Iran exchanged fire with the U.S. and Israel earlier in the week, threatening to rupture the ceasefire and push the Middle East back into full-scale war. A tenuous ceasefire has been in place since April 7.

Iran’s nuclear program and highly enriched uranium have long been at the center of tensions with the U.S. and Israel and an international source of concern.

Trump on social media asserted that “when all is calm,” the U.S. would go in and “downblend and destroy” the enriched uranium in Iran or in the U.S.

Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last year.

Meanwhile, fighting has continued in Lebanon between Israel, which has pushed its invasion deeper than at any point in over a quarter-century, and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group despite a ceasefire.

Iran has wanted a ceasefire deal to include the fighting in Lebanon. Tehran also has sought the release of billions of dollars in frozen funds.

The deal in its current form is a deep disappointment to Israel’s government, which has been sidelined in negotiations led by Pakistan and others. Even critics in Trump’s own Republican Party, struggling with an unpopular war ahead of the midterm elections, criticized the deal. Some said it did not improve on the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew the U.S. from during his first term and which he still describes as “bad.” __

Magdy reported from Cairo and Lidman from Tel Aviv, Israel.

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DUBLIN (AP) — Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney continued his efforts to pivot away from the United States and align with Europe, meeting with the leader of Ireland on Saturday ahead of the upcoming G7 summit and saying middle power countries shouldn’t compete for favor with America.

Carney said that Canada and the European Union have a combined population that is more than twice that of the United States, with a similarly sized economy and a collective defense budget that is twice that of China’s.

He said smaller nations can multiply their strength by partnering with like-minded allies.

“In a world of great power rivalry, middle powers have a choice — to compete for favor or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney said at Trinity College in Dublin.

He made similar comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which became a symbol of middle-power resistance in January, when he declared the global rules-based order over and condemned coercion by great powers on smaller countries.

Carney visited Ireland’s Taoiseach Micheál Martin earlier on Saturday and French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday ahead of the Group of Seven summit of industrialized democracies that begins on Monday in France.

U.S. President Donald Trump leaves for the G7 summit right after he hosts UFC fights at the White House on Sunday for his 80th birthday.

Trump is not currently scheduled to hold bilateral talks with Carney during the summit, according to a senior U.S. administration official.

Carney described Canada and Europe as a ”force for good — because we safeguard the values of human rights, dignity and pluralism that our people hold dear.”

The prime minister said together, the EU and Canada are one of the largest economic, cultural, technological, financial and military blocs in the world.

“The new world order will be built starting with Europe,” Carney said at an earlier joint news conference with Martin. “Canada is the most European of non-European countries. We are transforming our cooperation with Europe.”

In February, Canada became the first non-European member of the SAFE mechanism, the European Union’s defense procurement initiative. Carney, on this ninth trip to Europe since becoming prime minister 15 months ago, noted Canada 56 partnerships in the critical minerals sector across more than 10 countries, primarily in Europe.

Trade tensions continue to simmer between Canada and the U.S. There is a scheduled July 1 review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) the latest iteration of the North American free-trade pact that has intertwined the economies of the three countries since the early 1990s. Trump said this week that he may not renew the deal.

Carney said Canadian Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc will meet with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at the summit.

The prime minister said he doesn’t believe the U.S. is interested in big changes to free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

“The U.S. has been clear. They don’t want to change the fundamental architecture,” Carney said.

Carney emphasized that the Trump administration has allowed about 85% of Canadian trade to the U.S. to be tariff free because it is covered under USMCA.

Carney said that to fundamentally change the agreement the White House would have to go to Congress, adding that the White House doesn’t want to do that.

The U.S. official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity on ground rules set by the White House, said the U.S. has had outreach from Canada to set up further discussions on trade with the U.S. administration.

The Trump administration views a recent move by the Canadian government to roll back a regulatory decision that required foreign streaming platforms to allocate a portion of their Canadian revenues to fund local news and programming as positive decisions, the official added.

But, the official added, “no major breakthroughs” with Canada are expected during the summit.

Trump said again this week that the U.S. doesn’t need anything that Canada has. Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade, saying Trump’s trade war is causing a chill in investment.

“Prime Minister Carney has spoken with great clarity and conviction about Canada’s desire to deepen its engagement with Europe. Ireland warmly and unreservedly welcomes that ambition, and we will do what we can to strengthen relations between the European Union and Canada during our forthcoming presidency,” Martin said.

Ireland will be holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union starting in July.

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AP writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report from Washington.

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JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A mass shooting in South Africa this week was the latest in a trend of killings in some of the country’s poorest areas that experts say is a symptom of organized crime gangs taking advantage of the failures and sometimes absence of police.

The shooting carried out by multiple suspects in an informal settlement of shacks in Johannesburg left 12 people dead and at least 15 wounded, according to authorities.

There have not been any arrests.

South Africa’s president deployed the army to the streets in several hotspots earlier this year in an attempt to combat organized crime — an unusual move seen by critics as an admission that police in Africa’s most developed country were losing the battle in those areas.

Alongside that, South Africa’s police force has been embroiled in allegations of corruption and collusion with criminal syndicates. That has resulted in more than a dozen senior officers being arrested and top officials, including the police minister and the national police commissioner, being suspended.

Recent mass shootings — including two in December that left more than 20 people dead — have occurred in poor areas away from city centers where organized crime gangs take advantage of conditions like a lack of security, poor lighting and slow police responses, experts say.

“Criminal syndicates explicitly capitalize on this to hide weapons, execute hits, and vanish into the shadows,” Jacob Mofokeng, a professor of criminology at the University of South Africa, told The Associated Press.

South Africa has very high levels of violent crime, with the most recent annual statistics showing an average of more than 60 homicides a day.

But the vast majority of killings occur in poor townships or informal settlements. South Africa has a long history of deep inequality that is reflected in its crime: rich neighborhoods have much lower violent crime rates.

Illegal mining gangs have long been a problem in and around South Africa’s largest city of Johannesburg, which has some of the biggest gold reserves in the world.

The gangs are notorious and known as zama zamas — which translates roughly as “hustlers” or “chance-takers” in the Zulu language. They establish bases in impoverished and poorly policed areas and fight turf battles with other gangs or use violence to hold control in those areas.

Mining gangs often include migrants from neighboring countries who are in South Africa illegally, according to authorities.

That makes it hard for police to track down suspects as they have “no legal identification, no registered address, and no fingerprints or DNA profile,” said Mofokeng. “They are effectively a ghost.”

South Africa’s government has said it loses more than $3 billion a year to illicit mining. Zama zamas have been a problem for decades and were one of the reasons South African President Cyril Ramaphosa authorized a yearlong deployment of troops on the streets to fight organized crime in specific areas across the country.

Residents in the Johannesburg neighborhood hit by this week’s mass shooting said illegal mining gangs were known to operate there. Police said the motive for the shooting was not known, but mining gangs were a focus of the investigation.

South Africa has strict regulations controlling the legal ownership of firearms, but there are around 2 million to 3 million illegal guns circulating in a country of 62 million people, according to independent studies and civil society organizations.

Guns are by far the most common cause of homicides.

Willem Els, an analyst at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies, said the flow of illegal guns and police failures led to an ideal environment for criminality.

“In South Africa, we actually managed to create conditions that are very conducive for violent crime and also for organized crime syndicates to operate with impunity,” he told the AP. “We’ve got a lot of unregistered firearms that are not being controlled by the police.”

Analysts say police in South Africa are underresourced, but allegations of corruption in the force have also seriously undermined its credibility.

South Africa has had police corruption problems before. A new allegation last year by a provincial police commander that top officers and officials were colluding with organized criminals led President Ramaphosa to announce a national investigation into police corruption. That has resulted in a wave of arrests of senior police officers.

Private investigator and security specialist Mike Bolhuis said police corruption has implications for on-ground policing in those areas impacted by violent crime as citizens are sometimes hesitant to give out information or help authorities.

“The public doesn’t trust the police, they don’t trust the authorities, and they don’t trust each other,” Bolhuis said.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

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SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ supporters took to the streets of Romania and Bulgaria’s capitals on Saturday for their annual Pride parades, against a backdrop of rising opposition from conservative groups in the Orthodox Christian countries.

Marchers walked through Bucharest in Romania and Sofia in Bulgaria, waving colorful flags and blowing whistles and calling for equality.

Both Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union in 2007. Ahead of accession to the bloc, both countries adopted human rights legislation to meet EU standards, despite public opinion polls often indicating a lack of support for the community compared with other EU countries.

In ILGA-Europe’s 2025 Rainbow Map, which assesses the legal and policy landscape for LGBTQ+ people across Europe, Romania and Bulgaria ranked last among all 27 EU countries.

“We still have a deeply conservative society, with very strong traditional values,” said Alina Purcaru, a writer who attended the Bucharest march. “We still live in a patriarchy, sometimes explicit … with a lot of prejudice and a lot of fear.”

Romania and Bulgaria do not recognize same-sex marriage or civil partnerships, despite the bloc prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“That is why we are taking to the streets today … to demand the legalization of civil partnerships,” Vlad Viski, president of the nongovernmental organization MozaiQ, told The Associated Press.

“We are talking about essential rights, such as the right to inheritance, hospital visits, medical decisions, survivor’s pension,” he added.

Simeon Vassilev, one of the organizers of Sofia Pride, told journalists on Saturday that in Bulgaria, “thousands of same-sex couples live together, build homes, raise children, and care for one another … without the right to legal protection or recognition of their relationships.”

In recent years, hostility and hate speech against the LGBTQ+ communities in the two Eastern European countries have been on the rise, according to rights groups. On Saturday, anti-LGBTQ+ rallies were held in both capitals.

In Sofia, a “March of the Family” rally — set up by right-wing and religious groups in 2021 — celebrated “Christian, patriotic and traditional values” in its Saturday event. The conservative Orthodox Church, which unites some 80% of Bulgarians, expressed its “disagreement with the ideas and messages” and blessed the “traditional family.” In Bucharest, a “March for Normality” was also held by a nationalist group.

This year’s Pride event in Sofia was billed under a “Different Together” banner, with the organizers hoping to counter widespread rhetoric against the community.

Additionally, the “Progressive Bulgaria” party of Prime Minister Rumen Radev, which won an April general election, voiced support for the “March of the Family” in Parliament, saying that it’s “a cornerstone of our national security, identity and future.”

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee criticized the statement for “placing one type of citizens as more valuable than others.”

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McGrath reported from Leamington Spa, England.

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LONDON (AP) — Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Belfast on Saturday to denounce anti-immigrant rioters who set fire to homes and cars earlier in the week after a brutal stabbing blamed on an asylum seeker.

The anti-racism rally came after nights of fiery violence in parts of Northern Ireland following the arrest of a 30-year-old man from Sudan on charges of attempted murder in a stabbing that left a man partly blind.

Protests turned violent when groups of masked men set fire to several homes they believed to house immigrants, torched a bus and pelted police with bricks, bottles and firebombs. More than two dozen people were left homeless and 12 police officers were injured in what officials called “thuggery.”

“All it takes is for one person who’s not white and local to commit a crime and that fire of racism is rekindled,” Elaine Crory told the crowd gathered outside Belfast City Hall.

Peaceful demonstrators carried signs saying, “The problem is evil & violence not race,” “Your racism is not patriotism” and “Protect people not prejudice.”

Newlyweds Cara Bell and Matthew Richardson said it was a happy coincidence to emerge from getting married in City Hall and joining the peaceful demonstration after the ugly violence they witnessed earlier in the week.

“It’s important to note that things like today really show that this is not the general feeling of people in Belfast,” Bell said, noting it was “a week where you’ve seen the worst of humanity and the best of humanity in Belfast.”

Despite calls for calm by officials and the family of the victim, far-right and anti-immigrant figures were blamed for whipping up protests in several place across the U.K. earlier in the week.

Disorder in Glasgow, Scotland, targeted minorities and terrified worshippers at a mosque went into lockdown, police said.

On Saturday, an anti-racism group rallied thousands to reclaim Glasgow streets and “stand up to the far right.”

The group was met by a much smaller contingent of mostly men who appeared to make Nazi salutes and shouted anti-Muslim chants.

The anti-racism group shouted, “Nazi scum off our streets.”

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