‘Thuggery’: Belfast police fire water cannon at anti-immigration protests

Police in Northern Ireland have fired water cannon at far-right protesters in Belfast as small fires were set and bricks, rocks and bottles were hurled during a second consecutive night of unrest over a stabbing on a city street.

Demonstrators wearing masks prised bricks from walls outside homes and smashed pavements with sledgehammers to throw at riot police on Wednesday.

The clashes with police came several hours after a 30-year-old man appeared at a Belfast court charged with attempted murder in a stabbing attack that has triggered anti-immigration violence.

Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said an additional 200 officers were on the streets on Wednesday and that the force was calling in support from other services.

Politicians from both parties in Northern Ireland’s government condemned the violence.

First Minister Michelle O’Neill of the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein described it as “thuggery”.

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party says that “taking frustration at the evil actions of a person out on those who had no part in it is utterly wrong”.

Hilary Benn, Britain’s minister for the province, also told Sky News on Thursday that the violence and days of anti-immigrant unrest were “racist thuggery”.

Last week, a separate case involving a university student who was stabbed to death in Southampton, southern England, in December was seized on by activists and by US Vice President JD Vance, who blames immigration for the violence – an argument rejected by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and other British politicians.