Water cannons blast anti-immigration protest in Belfast

Police have blasted water cannons at anti-immigration 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.

Police vehicles block the road as a thick smoke billows from a truck set alight by protesters. A crowd gathers armed with bricks they tore from walls outside homes and smashed sidewalks.

Some throwing bricks at police And setting small fires which are soon put out. Water cannons also aimed at protesters which helped move them on.

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.

Thirty-year-old Hadi Alodid was ordered held in jail after appearing by video in Belfast Magistrates Court where a detective said he blinded Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye during a 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.

Belfast residents recalled their experience and fear in the aftermath of the anti-immigration unrest.

YAROSLAVA NAVROTSKA, Belfast resident from Ukraine "Someone said there (was a) fire opposite to mine and fireand then it all kind of blew up because of the cars in between, you know. Yeah, and like my front door was on fire as well. I mean the house inside isn't that much. It's more like the front of the house"

\ANSELME SHIMA, Belfast resident, from DR Congo said, "Yesterday, last night, it was a very bad moment of my life, again, saying whatever happened. I was in my house with my children, and the smoke came in, and then we were obliged to switch off, to close the window, to prevent the smoke going in. And then my kids started to ask me: 'Daddy, where this smoke coming from?'"

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said people had been "rightly sickened" by the stabbing attack in Belfast but condemned the violent protest which took place after the incident.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, "Mr. Speaker, people are rightly sickened by the horrific attack on Monday night in North Belfast. As you have just said, the man arrested has been in court in Belfast this morning and charged. I want to thank the Police Service of Northern Ireland and other first responders and members of the public who responded with such bravery. And our thoughts are with the victim. But let me be clear, Mr. Speaker, the acts of violence and arson that followed are totally unjustified."