By around 11pm, heavy rain started to fall over Belfast, and the crowds that had gathered began to disperse more quickly, leaving the burning wreckage of vehicles and street furniture behind them.
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. As they stormed the property, some claimed to be “liberating” it. Graffiti nearby demanded “local homes for local people”. A woman in the crowd said to her friend: “There’s wee girls inside.”
Nearby, a car was set on fire. As the chaos unfolded, a man in a skull face mask told people to put their phones away. Helicopters circled overhead, and two police officers looked on from their car as smoke billowed towards the sky - but appeared to conclude that it was not safe to intervene. By the time reinforcements arrived in four police vans, most of the hundreds-strong crowd had melted away, leaving only a few stragglers in their wake.
The violent scenes played out after a Sudanese asylum seeker was charged with attempted murder in relation to a knife attack filmed in a graphic video widely shared on social media on Tuesday. Footage was posted by Tommy Robinson and other far-right figures, prompting demands for protests in response.
On a terraced street strung with union flag bunting, off Newtownards Road in east Belfast, with a view of the city’s famous yellow Samson & Goliath cranes, a house has been set alight, the white render stained black with soot. A group of men and women stood watching as fire engines blocked the street, as firefighters struggled to bring the blaze under control, with the flames spilling out onto the street. On a parallel street, a smaller fire burned in the middle of the road, the smell of burning plastic heavy in the air.
At the end of the Newtownards road closest to the city centre, a row of police vans and cars were stationed, poised to respond to any escalating violence. At the other end of the road, the shell of a burned out bus stood beside a pavement littered with shattered glass, and in front of upended, smouldering wheelie bins, as a union flag fluttered gently from a flagpole overhead. Men in masks and hoods stopped to pose for photographs beside the wreckage of the bus as they made their way away from the scene of the violence.
Northern Ireland’s Justice Minister Naomi Long said “hate cannot be allowed” to win, as disorder broke out in a number of areas. Long said: “Earlier today, I stood beside the First Minister, deputy First Minister and the PSNI Chief Constable and we appealed for calm. Sadly, there are those who have chosen to ignore those pleas; they are intent on wreaking destruction on the very communities they claim they are trying to protect. They are weaponising the genuine hurt, concern and anger that people are feeling for their own misguided purposes. There is no place for masked thugs to take to the streets and threaten, intimidate, disrupt and cause wanton damage - it is simply disingenuous to claim this is being carried out for the good of Northern Ireland.”
Northern Ireland’s deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly also appealed for calm, saying in a social media post: “I know all are horrified about what has happened. I know so many are angry and there are those who want to register a protest. This is an appeal to act in an entirely peaceful way. Violence does not advance any cause, it damages it. Destroying things within your own community benefits no one. Taking frustration at the evil actions of a person out on those who had no part in it is utterly wrong.”
Residents are being removed from houses which have caught fire in Lendrick Street in east Belfast. Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service officers attended the scene on Tuesday night.