Masked men set houses, vehicles and a city bus ablaze in Belfast on Tuesday night, torching neighborhoods across the city after a graphic video of an alleged knife attack by a Sudanese asylum seeker went viral, igniting the latest anti-immigration violence to convulse the United Kingdom.
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Ignoring pleas for calm from politicians and clergy, rioters rampaged through heavily immigrant neighborhoods in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, in some cases going door-to-door and causing some families to flee under police protection.
Men in balaclavas and hoods shouted “foreigners out,” witnesses said. One family with children had to be escorted from a burning house, according to the BBC, and a family of Ukrainian refugees fled through their back door as the front door burned.
Attackers set cars alight in an eastern Belfast neighborhood, stopping in one case after a neighbor told them the vehicle was owned by “locals.” A member of Parliament from the Belfast area described the actions as a “race-based pogrom.”
The riots spread from Belfast to towns across Northern Ireland and reached into Scotland and England by nightfall. A heavy police presence remained Wednesday morning as officials braced for unrest to continue. Officials said some 200 back-up officers from other parts of the U.K. were due to arrive Thursday.
Rev. Brian Anderson of the East Belfast Methodist Mission, who was at the scene overnight, said many of the rioters were “young men out of control” but that the attacks seemed to be directed by a smaller number of older men.
Anderson’s congregation of native-born and immigrant parishoners was terrified, he said Wednesday morning amid the burned out cars and broken glass along Lendrick Street. Many parents kept their children home from school, he said.
Anderson condemned the violence, but said underlying social tensions must be addressed.
“I do believe this community does want to welcome immigrants, but they also want to have their housing issues and their employment issues dealt with,” he said.
The transit agency suspended services in parts of Belfast, after rioters pushed burning trash bins into a public bus. The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it received 13 reports of criminal damage and at least five of arson, some of which were treated as hate crimes.
Masked youths block a road with burning debris in north Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday evening. (Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images)
The unrest was the most serious to grip the United Kingdom in nearly a year and placed fresh strain on a government already battered by a running national argument over race, immigration and police conduct that has been building since last summer.
The immediate trigger this time was a knife attack late Monday in north Belfast, in which a man in his 40s suffered significant injuries to his eyes and slash wounds to his face and back. Bystanders, including one man wielding a hurling stick, intervened to stop the attack and were credited with saving the victim’s life.
Word spread rapidly on social media that the attacker was a foreign-born asylum seeker.
The suspect, a 30-year-old Sudanese national, was charged Tuesday with attempted murder. In accordance with U.K. law, he was not identified.
The suspect appeared at Belfast Magistrates’ Court by video link Wednesday and was denied bail.
Northern Ireland’s chief constable, Jon Boutcher, confirmed Tuesday that the suspect was living in the United Kingdom on a five-year visa granted in September 2023. Boutcher said the man was believed to have traveled to Paris from Sudan and then to Dublin before claiming asylum in Belfast.
“There is no trace of this suspect on any of our national security databases, and he was not known to the Police Service of Northern Ireland,” Boutcher said. Police said the attack was not being treated as terrorism.
Though Ireland and France are both members of the European Union, Ireland is not part of Europe’s visa-free travel zone. It was not clear how the suspect had traveled between the two nations.
The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom are part of a common travel union and movement between them is unregulated. Anti-immigration activists have accused Ireland of being an easy entry point for asylum seekers and other migrants into Britain.
Jim Allister, a member of parliament from the Traditional Unionist Voice party said he believed unfettered access had made Northern Ireland “an open house” and blamed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party for not doing more to stem migration.
“We have a man probably fighting for his life because he is a victim of the open borders that this government has permitted,” Allister said in a BBC interview.
Tensions over immigration long predate Starmer’s government, which took office in 2024 after 14 years of Conservative Party rule.
Video of the attack spread on social media Tuesday and some right-wing leaders called for mass protests.
The English anti-immigrant activist Tommy Robinson called the knife attack “yet another invader attack on our people.”
Elon Musk, the South Africa-born American billionaire, reposted Robinson’s call for nationwide protests on X, writing: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!”
The leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties issued a joint statement condemning the stabbing and urging calm, saying “there is no place in our society for this kind of brutality.”
First Minister Michelle O’Neill wrote on social media that groups of masked men burning families out of their homes amounted to “nothing less than disgusting cowardice.” O’Neill said there were “dangerous attempts to exploit” the attack to target innocent people simply trying to live, work and raise their families in Belfast.
Starmer called the knife attack “horrific” and “sickening.” His office said “it is time for calm,” and urged police be given “time and space to investigate appropriately.” Starmer and other senior politicians urged the public not to share the graphic video circulating online or to spread disinformation.
The Belfast riots are the latest upheaval in a prolonged crisis over race and immigration in Britain. Last June, Northern Ireland endured two weeks of anti-immigration rioting triggered by an alleged sexual assault in the town of Ballymena, which drove much of the town’s Roma population to flee.
More recently, violent protests erupted in May after Vickrum Digwa, 23, a Sikh man was convicted of murdering Henry Nowak, 18, university student stabbed in Southampton in December 2025.
Police bodycam footage showed Nowak, who had been handcuffed, pleading with responding officers who did not recognize that he was seriously injured, saying: “I can’t breathe” and “I’ve been stabbed.” An officer told him: “I don’t think you have, mate.”
Nowak died at the scene. Critics said officers treated Digwa, who claimed Nowak had attacked him “racially,” with more deference than the victim. The footage fueled claims that British police were institutionally biased against White Britons, claims that prosecutors and ministers have rejected.
