Leeds violence: Bus set on fire, police car overturned in U.K. riot over ‘family incident’

West Yorkshire Police address riot in Leeds, arrests made, and officials condemn the violence and misinformation spread by leaders.

Several arrests have been made after a double-decker bus was set on fire and a police vehicle was overturned amid stone-pelting and disorder as a riot broke out in Leeds, northern England, over what the local council has described as a “family incident”.

“Throughout the night several arrests were made in relation to the disorder and further arrests will be made over the next few days,” West Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Pat Twiggs said on Friday.

In an update on the riot on Thursday night, Twiggs said specialist public order officers who were assisting social services came under a barrage of bricks and missiles from a large group and a decision was taken to withdraw these officers temporarily "as it was evident that the police was their sole target".

"Police then returned to the area with fire colleagues to extinguish the remaining fires which were self-contained and didn’t pose a wider risk. By this point the crowd had diminished and officers were able to fully restore order,” he said.

Far-right Reform UK leader Nigel Farage is facing a backlash after he claimed the clashes represented the “politics of the subcontinent”. Labour MP for Leeds Alex Sobel accused him of “inflaming a situation with misinformation”.

The Labour councillor for Gipton and Harehills, Salma Arif, told LBC that the incident was not linked to the ethnicity or religious beliefs of the people involved, stressing that it was an "isolated family incident" that led to "spontaneous" disorder.

“It has quietened, it is calm. We have already started the clean up on the ground,” Leeds City Council chief executive Tom Riordan told the BBC on Friday.