Anti-immigration protesters in Belfast set bins and vehicles on fire amid unrest over knife attack – live

Here is a quick wrap up of the latest: Anti-immigration protesters torched buildings and vehicles in Belfast on Tuesday evening and blocked roads, a day after a stabbing allegedly by a Sudanese refugee, captured in a graphic video that shocked the country. British prime minister Keir Starmer described the attack, which took place in north Belfast late on Monday evening, as “sickening”. Video of the incident was shared widely on social media. Police charged a Sudanese man late Monday over a knife attack that left one person with serious neck and head wounds. The suspect, whose name has not been released, was with attempted murder, possession of a bladed weapon in a public place and making threats to kill. The 30-year-old man is due to appear in court on Wednesday. Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, slammed the protests and urged calm. “Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she said on X. “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 leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the incident, saying “there is no place in our society for this kind of brutality”. US tech billionaire Elon Musk had earlier retweeted a post by anti-immigration activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – also known as Tommy Robinson – adding: “Only !!”. As anti-immigration figures, including Reform party leader Nigel Farage and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, demanded details about the attacker, the interior ministry confirmed he was a Sudanese refugee with a residence permit valid until 2028. Northern Ireland police chief Jon Boutcher said he had arrived in the UK in 2023 via Paris and Dublin. Tensions were already high in Britain after violent skirmishes last week in Southampton, southern England, over the police handling of the murder of a young white student stabbed to death by a British Sikh man. On a residential street draped in loyalist flags near Belfast’s Shankill Road, the masked men approached a house with a boarded-up window and a security camera stationed outside. As a woman from an ethnic minority background looked down from an upstairs window, 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.