LONDON — Homes and vehicles were set ablaze as anti-immigrant violence erupted across several parts of Northern Ireland overnight following a knife attack that left a man seriously injured.
Masked men set fires at several homes they believed to house immigrants in the capital, Belfast, and police were pelted with objects as hundreds of protesters took to the streets after video of the knife attack went viral. A Sudanese man has been charged with attempted murder.
Yara Navrotska, a Ukrainian living in the city, said it was “terrifying,” adding that her front door “caught fire a bit” after her neighbor’s house was set ablaze. “I was with my dog at the house, so I had to, like, escape through the back door,” she told Reuters.
She added that she assumed the house had been targeted “because it’s a street where a whole lot of immigrants live,” adding that “people aren’t really friendly for like, specific immigrant groups.”
The violence erupted after anti-immigration activists seized on graphic video of an attack on a man in his 40s in Belfast that went viral.
The victim, who was later identified as Stephen Ogilvie, was hospitalized with serious injuries to his eyes, face and back.
Ogilvie’s family rejected the violence and called for calm.
“Peaceful protest is the only way forward,” they said in a statement after a hearing on the attack.
“We have many migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country. ... We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,” they said.
While their calls echoed those made by several politicians, the demonstrations were encouraged online by far-right activists, including Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, as well as tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Overnight, Musk reposted many social media messages denouncing the state of the United Kingdom. “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change,” he said in response to a post from Robinson.
After being criticized by figures such as Labour Party Chair Anna Turley, who called Musk’s posts “appalling” and “grievously wrong and doing damage,” Musk posted to X, saying, “Murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town is what’s making people angry, not ‘social media’!”
Politicians from both parts of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government condemned the violence. First Minister Michelle O’Neill of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin called it “thuggery” in a statement.
“Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she said.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said the 30-year-old suspect in the attack that sparked the violence, Hadi Alodid, is a Sudanese man who entered Northern Ireland from the neighboring Republic of Ireland in 2023, applied for asylum and was given a five-year permit to remain.
There is no information to suggest the attack is terrorism-related and it is not seeking other suspects, the force said.
Alodid was refused bail at Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday where District Judge Stephen Keown heard the victim had lost an eye in the attack.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the stabbing as “sickening” and said that he had “no tolerance for abhorrent scenes of violence like this on our streets.”
The stabbing follows repeated protests about immigration, with populist parties saying Britain’s asylum policy had allowed dangerous men into the country. There was anti-immigrant rioting in Northern Ireland last year amid anger over an alleged sexual assault.
Last week, a separate case of a university student who was stabbed to death in Southampton, England, in December was seized on by activists and Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the violence.
Henry Nowak, who was white, was killed by Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh who falsely claimed to police that he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded Nowak as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.
Digwa was convicted of murder for stabbing Nowak and sentenced last week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term. But the case has spurred heated debates about policing and race, and a protest over Nowak’s death turned violent with some attacking police with chairs and rocks.
In a separate interview with Britain’s Sky News, Anselme Shima said smoke from an exploding bus started pouring into the home where he lives with his three children.
“The kids are saying: ‘Daddy, are we OK, are we safe?’” he said, adding that he was shocked by the violence. “My call is, can we live in peace together instead of fighting another,” he said.
