Belfast creamed in a night of xenophobic violence after an attempted beheading by a Sudanese asylum seeker

LondonBelfast on Tuesday night experienced one of the most serious days of urban violence in recent years after several protests against immigration led to riots, arson, and attacks on homes, businesses, and vehicles in various parts of the Northern Irish capital and its metropolitan area. The mobilizations erupted following the brutal knife attack on Monday night in the north of the city, images of which have been widely shared on social media, and which have been exploited by far-right groups and agitators to fuel public indignation.

As the hours passed, the violence took on an increasingly xenophobic character. Several homes were burned on Oakley Street and Legann Street, as well as in areas near Crumlin Road, in the north of Belfast, in traditionally loyalist areas. In the east of the city, several families had to be evacuated from burning houses on Lendrick Street. In Dundonald, a home occupied by a foreign family was stoned and a van was set on fire in front of the property. British television showed images of children being evacuated from the affected buildings as firefighters tried to control the flames.

The attacks also affected businesses linked to immigrant communities. On Shankill Road, a historic Protestant loyalist stronghold in west Belfast, two phone shops were looted and an African business was set on fire. On Donegall Road, in the south of the city, several demonstrators attempted to set fire to Sham Supermarket, a shop specializing in Middle Eastern products. According to community leaders, some families have been attacked solely because of their skin color or origin.

Other of the most notable episodes of the night have been the burning of numerous cars, containers, and a city bus, as well as the attack on a police vehicle. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has deployed riot units and a surveillance helicopter as riots spread through numerous city neighborhoods. Rallies and road blockades have been registered in Yorkgate, north of Belfast; on Crumlin Road and the Ardoyne roundabout, areas particularly sensitive because they mark the border between Protestant unionist and Catholic republican neighborhoods; on Malone Road, near the loyalist enclave of Taughmonagh; on Upper Dunlady Road, east of the city; and on Antrim Road, at the intersection with Cliftonville Road, an area marked by the coexistence of Protestant and Catholic communities.

The incidents were not limited to Belfast. In Cloughfern, Newtownabbey, protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police officers, while in Portadown, County Armagh, a police vehicle was set on fire. Less intense protests were also registered in Bangor, Ballymena, and Antrim. And there have been flare-ups in other parts of the United Kingdom, such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Southampton.

The Northern Irish Prime Minister, Michelle O'Neill, has condemned the incidents and denounced the action of the hooded individuals. O'Neill has described the events as "pure criminality" and warned of attempts to exploit the stabbing to promote racism and social division.

following the protests fueled by the far-right on social media.

The suspect, a thirty-year-old Sudanese citizen, has been charged with attempted murder, possession of a bladed weapon in a public place, and death threats. According to the police, he arrived in Ireland after traveling from Sudan to Paris and then to Dublin, before traveling by bus to Belfast in February 2023 to claim asylum. Authorities assure that he obtained residency permission in the United Kingdom in September of that year, valid for five years. Some details of the timeline are still pending verification by the British Home Office.

The head of the PSNI, Jon Boutcher, has insisted that the man was not on any national security database nor was he known to police services. Despite the brutality of the assault, authorities state that there are no indications that allow it to be considered a terrorist act. At the moment, the motives for the attack are unknown.

The massive dissemination of the attack images — which have accumulated tens of millions of views on social networks — has reopened the debate on immigration and security in the United Kingdom. Several far-right leaders, including Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, leader of the Reform Party and Restore Britain, respectively, have politicized the attack. Another well-known far-right activist, Tommy Robinson, has also fanned the flames through the X platform and other internet forums. In this regard, the tweet by Elon Musk, the owner of X, who has once again attacked the UK's immigration policies, has been once again very significant.

The dramatic assassination attempt and the violence that followed took place a week after the Southampton police released images of the arrest, last December, of an 18-year-old young man, Henry Nowak, as he was dying after being stabbed up to five times by a Sikh man. The police's confusion of the victim for the aggressor, and the fact that it was spread via networks that the officers acted discriminatorily against the white boy due to the bias in favor of ethnic minorities within law enforcement, also led to the politicization of the incident. There were violent riots in the city, following the protest demonstrations fueled from social media by the far-right.