Police have declared a critical incident in Belfast after protests broke out on Tuesday night, turning violent across the city. On a residential street near the Shankill Road, masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and security camera. A woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window as some of the men rushed the front door and broke it down. With the air thick with smoke from fireworks, they attacked the downstairs windows with bricks.
As they stormed the property, some claimed to be 'liberating' it. Graffiti nearby demanded 'local homes for local people'. A woman in the crowd said to her friend: 'There's wee girls inside.' Nearby, a car was set on fire. As chaos unfolded, a man in a skull face mask told people to put their phones away. Helicopters circled overhead, and two police officers looked on from their car as smoke billowed towards the sky, but appeared to conclude that it was not safe to intervene.
The violent scenes played out after a Sudanese asylum seeker was charged with attempted murder in relation to a knife attack filmed in a graphic video widely shared on social media on Tuesday. Footage was posted by Tommy Robinson and other far-right figures, prompting demands for protests. X owner Elon Musk shared a post from Robinson announcing locations of protests, and another from the far-right Restore Britain party that read: 'Do not make peace with evil. Destroy it.'
By the time reinforcements arrived in four police vans, most of the hundreds-strong crowd had melted away, leaving only a few stragglers. The Shankill Road crowd's hostility to being filmed was in sharp contrast to unrest in Southport in 2024, where many recorded videos. Here, a teenager was dragged out of the crowd, apparently because he had been using his phone. 'You're hurting me,' he shouted. 'I can't breathe.'
There were also protests in other parts of the UK, including Southampton, where riots broke out last week following the sentencing of a man for the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak. On Tuesday night, dozens of police officers were deployed to block protesters as they sought to move along Portswood Road. When stopped, the group began chanting 'I can't breathe', echoing Nowak's last words as he lay dying in handcuffs after being stabbed.
In a unionist area of east Belfast, masked men set bins alight and pushed them into a bus on the Newtownards Road, suspending bus services. Some wore balaclavas and waved flares. Several explosions were heard in minutes. Several hundred people lingered to view the burnt Glider bus and at least three homes that had been torched. 'It was a Romanian gypsy family in that one,' said one woman, indicating a gutted terrace house that still smouldered.
Families with young children mingled with men wearing masks and young couples. Some exuded a carnival atmosphere, posing for pictures and drinking beer. One man hoisted up his son, aged around seven, for a better view of another destroyed house. 'Get a duke at that,' he said. 'Wow,' the boy replied. Sirens punctuated the night. Near the wreckage of the Glider bus, graffiti on a wall said 'fuck Islam'.
The BBC reported that the house belonged to a man in his 30s who had lived there for 10 years. 'Cars were set alight on the road, which caught fire to my house, but masked men were bashing down doors,' he told the broadcaster. On a parallel street, a car burned, the smell of burning plastic heavy in the air. At the end of the Newtownards Road closest to the city centre, a row of police vans and cars were stationed, poised to respond to any escalating violence.
At the other end of the road, the shell of the burned-out bus stood beside a pavement littered with shattered glass, and in front of upended, smouldering wheelie bins, as a union flag fluttered gently from a flagpole overhead. Men in masks and hoods stopped to pose for photographs beside the wreckage of the bus as they made their way away from the scene. Other protesters blocked cars from getting on to the M2 motorway. Protests were also reported in Antrim, Bangor and Ballymena. In Newtownabbey, two cars were set alight.
In Lisburn, Northern Ireland's education minister, Paul Givan, pleaded with those present to refrain from violence and disorder. 'There is a genuine shock about what happened last night,' he said. 'I think it has sent shockwaves across the community.' He added: 'It is important that people do conduct themselves in a peaceful manner to make sure that the key issues here around immigration can be heard and we are not distracted by any form of violence. That will only distract. People should express their views in a peaceful manner.'
Earlier, members of Belfast's Sudanese community described their anxiety at the growing tension. By 4pm on Tuesday, all the foreign-owned stores on Sandy Row had pulled down steel shutters, with staff speeding home to hunker down for the night, a scene repeated across other parts of Belfast. 'We've been sharing the same messages all day: go home early, stay inside, don't go out,' said Mohammed Mahmoud, a Sudanese employee of a grocery store. 'No one knows what will happen.'
Ali Adan, 38, another shopkeeper from Sudan who has lived in the region for 18 years, said race relations had worsened since 2018, with racial tensions in England blowing into Northern Ireland and vice versa. 'Something happens and people point the finger at every immigrant.'
