Australian travellers have been warned to exercise a “high degree of caution” in the United Kingdom as violent anti-immigrant riots persist across the country.
Riots erupted following the murder of three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed event in Southport, a seaside town in northwest England, after misinformation on social media wrongly identified the suspected killer as an Islamist migrant.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed a reckoning to those who have attacked Mosques and hotels holding migrants, hurled bricks at the police and counter-protesters, and looted shops and burnt cars.
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About 400 people have so far been arrested.
This week, the Australian government’s Smarttraveller website updated its advice, urging travellers to exercise caution due to “the threat of terrorism” by avoiding areas where protests are occurring, monitoring the media for information and following the instructions of local authorities.
The alert relates to the UK, including England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the national terrorism threat level is at “substantial” meaning an attack is “likely”.
The unrest also prompted India, Nigeria and other countries to warn their citizens to stay vigilant.
Trouble flared in Plymouth, southern England, on Monday night and again in Belfast in Northern Ireland, where hundreds of rioters threw petrol bombs and heavy masonry at officers, and set a police Land Rover on fire.
A message online says immigration centres and law firms aiding migrants would be targeted on Wednesday.
In the first widespread outbreak of violence in Britain for 13 years, hundreds of men, some women and children have attacked hotels housing asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East, chanting “Get them out” and “Stop the boats”.
They have also pelted mosques with rocks, unverified videos online have shown some ethnic minorities being beaten up and one man photographed at a protest in Sunderland on Friday had a swastika tattooed on his back.
The government has said riots in recent days were not a proportionate response to concerns about immigration, but violence whipped up by far-right agitators and supported by football hooligans and young people.