A five-year-old girl who was among three children injured in a knife attack in Dublin was fighting for her life on Friday, as the spotlight fell on far-right groups in Ireland following a night of riots in the Irish capital. Police were preparing for a potential second night of disturbances after about 500 far-right sympathisers and apparently angry youths on Thursday went on the rampage, causing damage that could cost tens of millions of euros to repair, according to Irish premier Leo Varadkar. A care assistant was also in a serious condition in hospital after the attack outside a primary school, which some blamed on an immigrant – reports that sparked violence, looting and thuggery. Around a dozen Garda (police) cars were torched, buses and trams were set alight and shops looted and windows smashed. As Dubliners were coming to terms with the violence, police came under fire for how prepared they were. Garda Commissioner Drew Harris blamed the rioting on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology”. Mr Harris, who said some of the 400 officers involved had been injured, one seriously, denied the disturbances were “a failure of personnel”. Asked about his force’s preparedness, he added: “We could not have anticipated that this would have been the reaction.” However, two PSNI water cannons were sent from Northern Ireland to Dublin on Friday to help with policing any further trouble at the weekend. Irish justice minister Helen McEntee said 34 people had been arrested, 32 of whom appeared in court on Friday, and that there would be further arrests. They faced charges relating to the misuse of drugs, theft and public order. But the leader of the main opposition party, Sinn Fein’s Mary Lou McDonald, called on Mr Harris and Ms McEntee to resign, saying gardai lost control of the city to a “mob fuelled by hate”. The violence flared after the attack on schoolchildren and their care assistant outside Gaelscoil Cholaiste Mhuire school at lunchtime on Thursday. A six-year-old girl also injured remained in hospital on Friday, but a five-year-old boy who was wounded was discharged. Mr Varadkar said it was important to back the police force, and Ms McEntee refused to resign, insisting Garda had all the resources necessary to keep people safe in Dublin over the weekend. Gardai were trawling through social media and CCTV footage, she said. And she described a “very volatile situation”, adding: “I have no doubt that many people will be imprisoned after those horrific events yesterday. “What happened yesterday evening following this awful, tragic act was nothing but thuggery. “This was a group of individuals who used this horrendous event as an opportunity to wreak havoc in our city, to sew division in our city, they will be responded to with force and gardai responded in the most appropriate way.” The clean-up was continuing on Dublin’s thoroughfare O’Connell Street on Friday, with burned-out buses lifted away by cranes while broken glass and missiles were cleared. Gardai made several arrests in Dublin city centre amid a significant security operation in the area. Politicians and police hailed as heroes by-standers who intervened to halt the attacker, including a Brazilian Deliveroo driver. Caio Benicio said he saw the man grab a girl and attack her. He said: “When I saw the knife, I stopped my bike and I just acted by instinct.” He said he took his helmet off and hit the man in the head with it “with all of my power”. “Later on I found out (the woman) was the teacher. She was very, very brave.” Gardai said a man seriously injured at the scene was a person of interest in their investigation. Ms McDonald said she had no confidence in Ms McEntee or Mr Harris, that there had been an “unacceptable, unprecedented collapse in policing” and that a problem had been “building for months”. “I do not say the following lightly, but it must be said. I have no confidence in how Dublin is being policed,” she said. “This shouldn’t have happened and – let me be very clear – it can never happen again.” However, Mr Varadkar said the rioters “brought shame on Dublin, brought shame on Ireland and brought shame on their families and themselves”. “These criminals did not do what they did because they love Ireland. They did not do what they did because they wanted to protect Irish people. They did not do it out of any sense of patriotism, however warped. “They did so because they’re filled with hate, they love violence, they love chaos and they love causing pain to others.” Ireland does not have a track record of strong far-right support. Various factors led to Thursday’s violence, according to Kevin Doyle, head of news at the Irish Independent – with a homelessness crisis and a steady growth in numbers of migrants helping to feed a growing far-right narrative that “Ireland is full”. “A group of people that arrived at the scene of the attack were chanting things like ‘get them out’,” he told The Independent. “At one point they broke through the Garda cordon. The people supposedly outraged about the attack actually impeded the investigation.” Mr Doyle added: “People are worried about it [far-right support] now. It’s definitely a minority but it’s a minority that has caused millions of damage. Tensions are high.” The unrest follows two high-profile crimes that rocked Ireland – Aidan Moffitt and Michael Snee, who were found murdered in their homes in Sligo, and schoolteacher Ashling Murphy, who was stabbed while out jogging in Tullamore, Co Offaly. Last week her killer, Jozef Puska, 33, a Slovakian, was jailed for life. In his victim impact statement, Ms Murphy’s devastated partner Ryan Casey alluded to some of the tensions facing Irish society as he pointed out her unemployed killer had benefited from social housing and welfare for 10 years. “I feel like this country is no longer the country that Ashling and I grew up in and has officially lost its innocence when a crime of this magnitude can be perpetrated in broad daylight,” he said. Earlier this year, a Travelodge in north Dublin housing asylum-seekers became the focus of right-wing protests. In September, crowds of far-right supporters protested outside Dublin’s parliament building. Wendy Via, president of the Global Project Against Hate & Extremism, said the country was part of a global trend in growing right-wing sentiment. “In Ireland, its largely anti-immigrant sentiment driving it,” she told The Independent, adding: “You have to keep your eye on the fringe.” “People claim this attacker is a certain race or ethnicity and it was driven by XYZ and it just spreads and it is very inflammatory. They will co-opt another issue to legitimise themselves and unfortunately sometimes you get what you got last night, which was arson, damage and injuries.” UK Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said the scenes showed society needed “a proper debate" about “migration, immigration, what we need in skills and how we treat people and what pressures it brings to our domestic services”. Read More Boris Johnson claims anti-Brexit campaigners having ‘orgasm’ over migration figures Garda have ‘all resources necessary’ to keep people safe following Dublin riots Boris Johnson links Dublin ‘race riots’ to immigration fears Narrative of extremism must be challenged, Scottish First Minister says Irish government challenge to UK legacy laws would not derail relations – Gove Riot damage could cost tens of millions of euros, Leo Varadkar says

A Republican official charged with overseeing elections in the state of Georgia, where Donald Trump tried and failed to change the results of his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, lamented on Sunday that the ex-president was able to make himself out as a “martyr” to his supporters as he continues to face deepening legal problems. Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer to Georgia’s secretary of state, watched his boss Brad Raffensperger survive a Trump-backed primary challenge in 2022 after Mr Raffensperger refused to go along with Mr Trump’s attempts to change the lawful election results. He has long said that the former president’s efforts after the 2020 election were inappropriate, including an early January 2021 phone call between Mr Raffensperger and the president during which Mr Trump asked the Georgia elections chief to “find” him 11,000 votes. That phone call and the effort by Mr Trump to change the results in Georgia are expected to result in a criminal indictment filed by Fulton County prosecutors within the next week or so; Fani Willis’s office is currently presenting evidence against the ex-president and his legal team to a grand jury. A “special purpose” grand jury – unique under Georgia law – had previously been called in the matter, but that body did not have the final authority to approve or reject criminal indictments. On Sunday, Mr Sterling spoke to ABC’s This Week about what he said was a troubling sign; that Republicans were flocking to Mr Trump as further consequences for his long-alleged criminal behaviour unfold. "This has been giving oxygen to his campaign," Mr Sterling said. "This is raising tons of money, and a lot of that money ... is being used to pay for his lawyers.” "He's making himself a martyr, and a lot of the American people are going behind him because they feel like some of these things are a little bit of a stretch," he said. Complicating the narrative regarding Mr Trump’s criminal indictments is the very first of the actions taken against him by prosecutors: The charging of Mr Trump more than 30 times by officials in Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office over the Stormy Daniels affair which is alleged to have played out as far back as 2016. Mr Trump is charged with falsifying business documents to hide hush payments to Ms Daniels, an issue which some have said is being prosecuted far too late and as a result detracting from the credibility of the unrelated investigations into both Mr Trump’s efforts to change the 2020 election results and the discovery of classified defence materials at his properties. Mr Trump remains the far-and-away leader of the 2024 GOP primary field, and has actively campaigned on the issue of his criminal charges, which he has portrayed as a weaponisation of the US justice system by Democrats. He continues to deny wrongdoing in all matters, including his embrace of conspiracies that led to thousands of his supporters attacking the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Read More Trump steps up attacks on Fani Willis as Georgia probe links Trump team to voting system breach - latest Georgia prosecutors have text messages linking Trump team to voting system breach, report says Georgia grand jury to hear Trump election subversion case next week Ron DeSantis faces ‘pudding fingers’ chant and other protests during Iowa campaign stop

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