Homes and vehicles set alight as anti-immigration violence flares over Northern Ireland knife attack

Anti-immigrant protesters in the UK took to the streets on Tuesday after a 30-year-old man from Sudan was charged with attempted murder following a knife attack in Northern Ireland that Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned as “horrific.”

Masked crowds gathered in various parts of Belfast on Tuesday evening, setting houses, a bus, cars and barricades on fire. They targeted the homes of ethnic minorities, according to a local pastor and several politicians.

Some members of pastor Jack McKee’s church “who have been with us for 20 years” were “getting put out of their home, had their house attacked, windows smashed, houses beside them burned,” he told the BBC. “They’re good Christian people and they’re getting put out just because they’re Black.”

Social media video verified by CNN shows homes in the Northern Ireland capital engulfed in flames as an emergency vehicle and firefighters run down the street. Tensions also boiled over in the neighboring town of Newtown Abbey, where protesters set two cars alight, according to video geolocated by CNN, and in Kilkeel where another car was set on fire.

Read more: CNN