Anti-Immigrant Riots Erupt in Belfast After Knife Attack Blamed on Sudanese Man

Northern Ireland’s authorities and police have called for restraint after a night of unrest that erupted following a knife attack in Belfast late Monday evening.

On Tuesday evening, firefighters and emergency workers evacuated immigrant families from homes that had been set on fire in Belfast. Cars burned in the streets. On Newtownards Road in the east of the city, a group of young people set fire to a city bus, while in other areas burning trash bins were used to block roads.

The unrest began after police charged a 30-year-old Sudanese national with the attempted murder of a man in his 40s. Amid intensifying disputes over immigration in Britain, anti-immigrant activists began calling for protests.

Police in Northern Ireland said late Tuesday evening that “isolated pockets of disorder” had broken out in several locations across the region.

The suspect in the attack, a refugee legally resident in the UK, is due to appear in court in Belfast on Wednesday morning. Amid rumors and unverified accounts circulating online, police reiterated that he remains in custody at a police station pending the court hearing.

Video of the attack, showing the suspect striking the victim in the neck and face, spread rapidly on social media on Tuesday. The victim is in hospital with serious injuries to his face, neck and back.

Northern Ireland’s first minister, Michelle O’Neill, appealed for calm. In a statement published early Wednesday morning, she stressed that there could be “no justification or explanation” for such attacks.

“Groups of masked men forcing families from their homes with fire is nothing but vile cowardice. This has nothing to do with community. It is outright thuggery,” she wrote. O’Neill called the knife attack in north Belfast “horrific and unacceptable,” but added that “dangerous attempts” were now being made to use it “to target and attack innocent people who are simply trying to live, work and raise their families here.”

The far-right English activist Tommy Robinson, who has previously been convicted several times, urged people to take to the streets after the attack. On social media, he described what happened as “an invader’s attack on our people.” Elon Musk circulated lists of locations across Northern Ireland where people were being urged to gather, and also shared posts by British far-right figures.

Northern Ireland remains the least ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom: about 3.4% of its residents belong to ethnic minorities.

But since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of intercommunal violence, immigration to Northern Ireland has grown. The region is gradually becoming more diverse, especially in larger cities such as Belfast.