Police officers injured in ‘serious disorder’ after 3 girls killed in knife attack at Taylor Swift-themed dance party

Several British police officers were injured on Saturday amid violent clashes across the country that erupted after three girls were murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in northwest England on Monday.

Several police officers were injured amid “serious disorder” in Liverpool city centre, around 20 miles from the scene of Monday’s horrific stabbing spree in the seaside town of Southport, Merseyside Police said.

There is “no place for this despicable behaviour which disrupts the lives of members of the public who live in the city or who are visiting to enjoy the amenities the city has to offer,” the police force, which covers Liverpool and Southport, wrote in the X.

In Hull, a city in north-east England, three police officers were injured and four people were arrested amid the chaos, which included protesters throwing bottles at the protests.

Video posted on X shows hundreds of people gathered outside a shopping centre in Hull, where protesters looted a shoe store before setting fire to stolen supplies dumped outside the shop, with a second fire breaking out just a few hundred metres away.

Protesters also smashed windows at the Royal Hotel, where riot police were deployed with dogs to quell the chaos, according to the Daily Express.

In Stoke-on-Trent in central England, bricks were thrown at police stations, while brawls were reported in cities including Belfast, Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham.

Newly elected Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer called an emergency meeting on Saturday with senior ministers where he said the police had the government’s support to crack down on “extremists” who were attacking officers and trying to “sow hatred”, according to his office at No. 10 Downing Street.

“There was no ‘excuse for violence’ at the protests,” Starmer said.

Riots and disturbances involving hundreds of protesters have rocked the country in recent days following Monday’s spate of stabbings, in which three 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 with the attack, Axel Rudakubana, 17, was born in Cardiff, Wales, to Rwandan parents, but false rumours spread online that the killer was a radical Muslim immigrant, sparking a wave of riots and protests, including in Sunderland in the north-east of the country, on Friday night.

With pole wires