BELFAST: Anti-immigration protesters torched buildings and vehicles in Belfast on Tuesday evening and blocked roads, a day after a stabbing allegedly by a Sudanese refugee, captured in a graphic video that shocked the country.
Hundreds of protesters, many masked, gathered at several locations across Belfast, AFP journalists saw. A bus and several cars were set alight, while a building fringing the city center caught fire and its residents had to be evacuated.
“By 7:30 p.m. (18:30 GMT) they started (a) fire in the bins...we heard police cars and sirens,” said one resident, Eemran, an engineer of Indian origin who has been living in Belfast for slightly over a year.
“More and more people started coming, they started throwing petrol bombs. Suddenly the fire started going...we had smoke inside the building...fire people came in and they said ‘go down’,” he said in broken English.
Camila, a 36-year-old Chilean who moved to Belfast a month ago, said it was “scary.”
