Bedlam broke out in Belfast on Tuesday evening as protests turned violent and rioters set fires to vehicles and homes in the wake of an apparent beheading attempt allegedly at the hands of a Sudanese migrant.
Horrific footage of the stabbing attack on Monday evening, in which a man was seen repeatedly stabbing another man’s neck, inflamed tensions in Northern Ireland, which had previously been the site of anti-mass migration.
On Tuesday morning, police announced that they had arrested a man in his 30s from Sudan who had been granted leave to remain status by the UK Home Office after being granted in 2023, after having travelled through Paris and Dublin, ultimately entering the UK territory through the soft open border with the Irish Republic.
Bins set alight by protesters on Ligoniel Road, Belfast, as disorder flared during an anti-immigration demonstration organised in response to Monday night’s stabbing attack in the city. Picture date: Tuesday June 9, 2026. (Photo by PA/PA Images via Getty Images)
According to the Belfast Telegraph, protests over the alleged attempted murder were held across the city, some of which descended into scenes of chaos and violence. Multiple vehicles, including a city bus and a police car, were set on fire by rioters.
Meanwhile, reports have also emerged of demonstrators throwing petrol bombs at police officers in the Cloughfern area of the city. Separately, residents were forced to evacuate their homes after they caught fire in East Belfast. ‘
The head of the locally devolved government in Northern Ireland, First Minister Michelle O’Neill, called for calm, saying that “this has nothing to do with community… this is outright thuggery.”
“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,” she said.
Firefighters attend a house which caught fire on Ligoniel Road, Belfast, as disorder flared during an anti-immigration demonstration organised in response to Monday night’s stabbing attack in the city. Picture date: Tuesday June 9, 2026. (Photo by PA/PA Images via Getty Images)
“Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice… Racism, intimidation and violence are wrong wherever they occur. 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 outbreak of chaos comes a year to the day after similar anti-migrant riots erupted in Northern Ireland after Roma migrant teens had been charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the town of Ballymena.
This led to multiple days of violence and reportedly forced multiple families of Romanian and Bulgarian heritage to leave the area altogether after having their homes targeted in suspected arson attacks.
Vehicles set on fire by protesters on McMaster Street in east Belfast, as disorder flared during an anti-immigration demonstration organised in response to Monday night’s stabbing attack in the city. Picture date: Tuesday June 9, 2026. (Photo by PA/PA Images via Getty Images)
Ahead of the violent scenes on Tuesday, the leader of the conservative Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) party, Jim Allister, urged the people of Belfast not to “fall into the trap” of diverting attention away from the horrific result of open borders by engaging in violence.
While acknowledging that people have a “right to be angry” over the attack and the importation of an “alien culture” against their will, the MP said that engaging in violence in response would only give Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer an “excuse to talk in dismissive terms about right-wing extremists and about people indulging in violence” rather than addressing the root of the problem.
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