• Far-right protesters clashed with police outside a mosque in Southport, England, after three girls were fatally stabbed.
• The protesters hurled bricks, and bottles, and set fire to garbage bins and vehicles, causing damage.
• Local lawmaker Patrick Hurley attributed the violence to “propaganda and lies” spread on social media.

On Wednesday, residents swept up broken bricks, shattered glass, and burnt plastic after far-right protesters clashed with police outside a mosque in a northwest England town where three girls had been fatally stabbed.

In Southport, a violent crowd of several hundred hurled bricks and bottles at riot police, setting garbage bins and vehicles on fire, hours after a peaceful vigil for the girls, aged 6, 7, and 9, who were killed during a Taylor Swift-themed summer holiday dance and yoga class. The ambulance service reported treating 39 police officers for injuries, with 27 of them being taken to hospitals.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “thuggery” and stated that the protesters had “hijacked” the community’s grief. Norman Wallis, chief executive of the Southport Pleasureland amusement park, joined dozens of others in using brushes and shovels to clear the debris.

“It’s horrendous what those hooligans have done last night,” he said. “It was like a war scene. People from out of town just causing absolute mayhem.”

“But none of those people were the people of Southport,” he added. “The people of Southport are the ones here today cleaning the mess up.”

The police said that the protesters, who supported the far-right English Defense League, were driven by anger and false online rumors about the 17-year-old suspect arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder.

The police reported that the suspect remained in custody on Wednesday while a magistrate granted detectives more time to question him before they either charge him with a crime or release him without charge. Police can hold a suspect for up to two days but can apply for an extension to hold them for up to four days.

The police stated that the name of the suspect circulating on social media—disseminated by far-right activists and dubious accounts claiming to be news organizations—was incorrect. They confirmed that the suspect was born in Britain, countering online claims that he was an asylum-seeker. In Britain, the names of suspects under the age of 18 are typically not made public.

Local lawmaker Patrick Hurley stated that the violence by “beered-up thugs” resulted from “propaganda and lies” spread on social media.

“This misinformation doesn’t just exist on people’s Internet browsers and on people’s phones. It has real world impact,” he said.

The rampage in Southport, a seaside town near Liverpool, is the latest shocking attack in a country where recent increases in knife crime have heightened anxieties and led to calls for the government to take stronger action against bladed weapons, which are by far the most commonly used tools in UK homicides.

On Monday, a teen armed with a knife entered a studio where about two dozen children, mostly girls, were attending a Taylor Swift-themed summer vacation workshop and launched a vicious attack, according to police. Alice Dasilva Aguiar, 9, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Bebe King, 6, died from their injuries. Ten other people were injured, with five children and two adults in critical condition. Swift wrote on Instagram that she was still processing “the horror” of the event.

“These were just little kids at a dance class,” she wrote on Instagram. “I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”

Witnesses described hearing screams and seeing children covered in blood amidst the chaos outside the Hart Space, a community center that hosts everything from pregnancy workshops to women’s boot camps. Joel Verite, a window cleaner on his lunch break, said his colleague slammed on the brakes and reversed the van to where a woman was clinging to the side of a car, covered in blood.

“She just screamed at me: ‘He’s killing kids over there. He’s killing kids over there,’” Verite told Sky News.

“It was like a scene you’d see on a disaster film,” he said. “I can’t explain to you how horrific it is what I saw.”

Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton shot dead 16 kindergartners and their teacher in a school gymnasium in Dunblane, Scotland. The UK then banned the private ownership of nearly all handguns. In Britain, mass shootings and killings with firearms are exceptionally rare, with knives used in about 40 percent of homicides in the year to March 2023.

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