Several homes have been set on fire and a bus torched in Belfast as violent disorder swept across the city on Tuesday night, with Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill condemning the rioters as “thugs” carrying out “disgusting cowardice” in a night of chaos that spread to cities across mainland Britain.
Fires were reported at multiple residential properties off the Crumlin Road in north Belfast, where a significant emergency response involving police, fire and ambulance services was deployed. A home on Oakley Street was ablaze along with two vehicles parked in front of it. Windows were smashed at a property on the Crumlin Road itself, with four ambulances reported at the scene. Fires were also reported at homes on Lendrick Street in east Belfast.
The violence erupted in the aftermath of Monday night’s knife attack on Kinnaird Avenue, in which a man was left in a critical condition after a Sudanese asylum seeker — who entered Northern Ireland by crossing the Irish border — was arrested and subsequently charged with attempted murder.
First Minister O’Neill issued a stark condemnation of the rioters on social media. “Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice. This has nothing to do with community. This is outright thuggery,” she wrote. She acknowledged the original attack while insisting it could not justify what followed. “The attack in north Belfast was heinous and wrong. But there are dangerous attempts to exploit that, to target and attack innocent people who are simply trying to live, work and raise their families here. There can be no excuse and no justification for these attacks tonight. No one wants to see this on our streets and I again appeal for calm.”
The disorder was not confined to Belfast. Protests were also reported in Glasgow city centre and St Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh, according to the BBC. In Southampton, police were deployed after demonstrators gathered outside the Highfield House Hotel, the PA news agency reported — the latest sign that the Belfast attack had become a flashpoint for far wider civil unrest across the United Kingdom.
Politicians and community leaders had spent the day urging calm, with warnings that far-right agitators would seek to exploit the attack. Those warnings proved prescient as the violence took hold across multiple cities simultaneously on Tuesday night.
This article will be updated as more information becomes available.
