Several people received minor injuries when a large public-order incident erupted before a Mass in a Mullingar cemetery.
In a report from the Irish Independent, it is stated that the police recovered knives, golf clubs, and hammers after over 100 members of two rival Traveller families engaged in a melee just before 3 o'clock on Sunday.
The event took place at Ballyglass Cemetery in Mullingar, Co Westmeath. Around 2000 churchgoers were in attendance for a mass on Cemetery Sunday when the violence erupted. It is believed that the families involved in the brawl live outside of the Co Westmeath area but have relatives buried in Mullingar.
The police managed to reign in the chaos when the ejected one of the families from the graveyard. Sergeant Kieran Williams of the Mullingar police force says that there had been searches carried out in the cemetery earlier in the day, and that they had "extra resources deployed, including the air support unit."
Despite the scale of the incident, only one arrest has yet been made, a man in his late 40s, arrested for public-order offenses. He is currently being detained.
In the riotous calamity, a small number of bystanders received small injuries as a result of missiles thrown from either side, and one elderly woman was struck by a rock.
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