Night of
Violence Grips Northern Ireland After Stabbing Attack
Cars and
a bus were set on fire and families were driven from their homes as the
stabbing attack caused tensions to spill onto the streets.
By Megan
Specia
June 10,
2026
Updated
7:21 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/10/world/europe/belfast-attack-riots-northern-ireland.html
Political
leaders and police in Northern Ireland were urging restraint on Wednesday
morning after a night of violence roiled the country in the wake of a brutal
stabbing attack in Belfast.
Firefighters
and emergency responders escorted immigrant families from their homes that had
been set alight in Belfast on Tuesday night, as burning cars blazed on the
street. A city bus was set on fire by young men on Newtownards Road in east
Belfast, and garbage cans engulfed in flames were used to create roadblocks
elsewhere in the city.
The
unrest came after authorities charged Hadi Alodid, 30-year-old Sudanese man,
with attempted murder in the stabbing attack Monday night, prompting calls from anti-immigrant activists
for protest amid heightened tensions in the United Kingdom over immigration.
The
Police Service of Northern Ireland said in a statement issued late Tuesday that
“sporadic pockets of disorder” had broken out in a number of locations across
Northern Ireland.
Mr.
Alodid, a refugee who is legally residing in the United Kingdom, appeared in a Belfast court on Wednesday
morning. As misinformation and speculation about the attacker continued to
swirl online, the police reiterated that the suspect remained in custody in a
police station before his court appearance.
Graphic video of the attack showing the
suspect swiping at the victim, whose face and neck are covered in blood,
quickly spread online on Tuesday.
The
prosecutors who charged Mr. Alodid identified the victim as Steven Ogilvy. He
is in the hospital with serious injuries to his face, neck and back, and
prosecutors said he had lost an eye as a result of the attack,
Michelle
O’Neill, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, appealed for calm, saying
there could be “no excuse and no justification for these attacks,” in a
statement issued early on Wednesday.
“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 called the earlier stabbing attack in north Belfast
“heinous and wrong,” but added that “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.”
Among
those stoking outrage over the stabbing was Tommy Robinson, a far-right English
agitator with a number of criminal convictions. Mr. Robinson, whose real name
is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, had urged people to take to the streets after what he
called an “invader attack on our people” in posts on social media. The
billionaire Elon Musk had shared lists of locations around Northern Ireland for
people to gather and shared posts by far-right figures in Britain.
Prime
Minister Keir Starmer, in a statement posted on the social media platform X
called the scenes of violence in Belfast “shocking and completely
unacceptable.”
“There is
no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our
communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere,” he said.
“It is clear that people were targeted last night because of their background
and I will not tolerate it.”
Northern
Ireland is the least ethnically diverse part of the United Kingdom, with just
approximately 3.4 of the residents from minority ethnic backgrounds.
But in
the years since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement forged peace in the region after
decades of sectarian violence, immigration to Northern Ireland has grown, and
it is steadily becoming more diverse, particularly in urban areas like Belfast.
Michael
D. Shear and Lynsey Chutel contributed reporting.
Megan
Specia reports on Britain, Ireland and the Ukraine war for The Times. She is
based in London.
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