{"id":1514742,"date":"2026-06-11T03:24:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T08:24:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1514742"},"modified":"2026-06-11T03:24:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T08:24:37","slug":"police-blast-water-cannons-at-belfast-protesters-as-unrest-flares-again-after-stabbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1514742","title":{"rendered":"Police blast water cannons at Belfast protesters as unrest flares again after stabbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
People watch as firemen arrive to put out vehicle that was set alight during a protest in East Belfast following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo\/Peter Morrison)<\/figcaption><\/figure>BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) \u2014 Police blasted water cannons Wednesday at protesters in Northern Ireland who set small fires and hurled bricks, rocks and bottles at them during a second night of violence over a brutal stabbing on a Belfast street.<\/p>\n

Demonstrators wearing masks tore bricks from the walls outside homes and smashed sidewalks with sledgehammers to toss at riot police. In one place, the unruly crowd used sections of a dismantled picket fence to take cover on the street.<\/p>\n

The clashes with police came several hours after a 30-year-old man from Sudan appeared in a Belfast court charged with attempted murder in a stabbing attack that left a man seriously injured and triggered anti-immigrant violence.<\/p>\n

Hadi Alodid, 30, was ordered held in jail after appearing by video in Belfast Magistrates\u2019 Court, where a detective said he blinded Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye during the knife attack. He was also charged with possessing a knife and threatening to kill a radiographer while being treated for a hand injury after the assault.<\/p>\n

When police arrived at the crime scene, they found Alodid on the man, armed with a kitchen knife, the detective said. Alodid later told hospital staff: \u201cI\u2019ve killed someone, I don\u2019t know if they are dead,\u201d and said, \u201cI will kill you.”<\/p>\n

He refused legal representation through an Arabic interpreter and did not enter a plea.<\/p>\n

Police were prepared for more violence after masked men on Tuesday set fire to several homes they believed to house immigrants, burned trash bins, torched a Belfast bus and pelted police with objects.<\/p>\n

Firefighters rescued several people from burning houses and more than two dozen people were left homeless.<\/p>\n

Anselme Shima, a Belfast resident originally from Congo, said he saw smoke from burning vehicles near his home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lived on my street for almost 10 years, I have a good relationship with my neighbors, but last night was a horrific one,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what to do. I\u2019m scared. Seeing this, I\u2019m wondering if I\u2019m next.\u201d<\/p>\n

Families, one with a baby, were rescued and taken to police stations for safety, Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese weren\u2019t just families from ethnic minority communities, these were families from across communities that were caught up in this vile behavior last night,” Boutcher told the BBC. \u201cThere is absolutely no excuse for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boutcher said 200 more officers would be on the streets Wednesday and the PSNI was calling in support from other forces. Bus and train operators in Belfast said they would stop services early because of expected protests.<\/p>\n

Ogilvie\u2019s family appealed for an end to the violence and said migrants \u201cmake a deeply valuable contribution to our country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,\u201d the family said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Politicians from both parts of Northern Ireland\u2019s power-sharing government condemned the violence. First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein said it was \u201cthuggery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGroups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said that \u201ctaking frustration at the evil actions of a person out on those who had no part in it is utterly wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attack was caught on video<\/strong><\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s attack, caught in video footage that quickly spread on social media, was seized on by anti-immigration activists. Ogilvie, a man in his 40s, was hospitalized with deep cuts to his head, face and back.<\/p>\n

Police said Alodid entered Northern Ireland from the neighboring Republic of Ireland in 2023, applied for asylum and was given a five-year permit to remain.<\/p>\n

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said there is no information to suggest the attack was terrorism-related.<\/p>\n

Protests were encouraged online by far-right activists, and the street violence erupted despite politicians’ calls for calm.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the stabbing attack as \u201csickening,\u201d but said violence against people based on their background would not be tolerated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scenes in Belfast last night were shocking and completely unacceptable,” Starmer said on X. \u201cThere is no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long said social media agitators who \u201cyesterday would have struggled to find Belfast on a map\u201d were \u201cweaponizing\u201d the fears of local people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re driving people from their homes based on nothing but the color of their skin, you can\u2019t dress that up any other way, it\u2019s racism, and those bad faith actors need to take a step back,\u201d she told the BBC.<\/p>\n

Some raise questions about the Irish border<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some politicians said the stabbing should spark a review of the open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n

The border is a highly sensitive issue. Allowing the free flow of people is a major pillar of the peace process that largely ended decades of violence known as \u201cThe Troubles.\u201d The conflict involving Irish Republican and British Loyalist militants and U.K. security forces left almost 3,600 people dead before a 1998 peace accord.<\/p>\n

Much of Tuesday\u2019s violence took place in working-class areas where former paramilitary groups still hold considerable sway over the streets.<\/p>\n

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 U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the violence, an idea rejected by Starmer and other British politicians.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Digwa was convicted of murder and sentenced last week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term. A protest over Nowak\u2019s death turned violent, with some attacking police with chairs and rocks. Several people were charged with violent disorder.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Lawless reported from London. Brian Melley contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Police blasted water cannons Wednesday at protesters in Northern Ireland who set small fires and hurled bricks, rocks and bottles at them during a second night of violence over a brutal stabbing on a Belfast street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1514404,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,1504],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-heads","category-abc-world-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-06-13 03:23:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1514742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514743,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514742\/revisions\/1514743"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1514404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1514742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1514742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1514742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}