BELFAST: Police arrested 16 people during a second night of disorder in Northern Ireland sparked by a brutal Belfast stabbing, a senior minister said on Thursday, condemning rioters for “racist thuggery”.

The clashes with police on Wednesday came hours after a Sudanese man appeared in court charged with attempted murder over Monday night’s shocking knife attack.

Video of the incident — which showed a man straddling another lying in the street, slashing him with a knife — went viral across social media platforms, triggering condemnation and anger that has spilled onto the streets of Northern Ireland.

The condition of the stabbing victim, Stephen Ogilvie, was “improving” on Thursday, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Gavin Robinson said after meeting his family.

Ogilvie’s relatives have appealed for calm in the wake of the “terrible tragedy”, saying violence was “not welcome”. But 12 officers were injured in the latest unrest, the UK government’s Northern Ireland minister Hilary Benn confirmed.

Dozens of masked agitators clashed with riot police late into the night, setting fire to a car and boarded up property, journalists saw. Projectiles, including petrol bombs and bricks, were hurled as riot police used water cannon to push back dozens of rioters trying to reach a hotel that had been used to house asylum seekers northwest of Belfast.

Benn said the scale of that unrest was “a lot less than the terrible events that we witnessed on Tuesday night”. Then, masked rioters had torched vehicles and buildings and forced families to flee their homes in Belfast.

Social media

Benn condemned “the sense of fear that has been created”. “Above all for those who were intimidated, burned out of their houses by masked thugs on the basis of the colour of their skin,” he said.

A nurse was “chased and intimidated” as she travelled to work at Ulster Hospital near Belfast on Wednesday, the body that runs the hospital said. The biggest and main mosque in Northern Ireland also had to be shut for the first time in its history on Tuesday, said chairman Mohammed Arshed.

Two more people were charged in connection with the unrest and will appear in court later Thursday, following several being charged Wednesday, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said. Most of the disturbances have occurred in Protestant pro-UK unionist areas of Belfast, with Catholic pro-Irish unity districts largely quiet.

But Ryan Henderson, the force’s assistant chief constable, told reporters there was “no evidence” it had been coordinated by loyalist paramilitaries. Authorities have instead blamed far-right activists for stoking anger on social media.

‘Influx of migrants’

Sudanese national Hadi Alodid, 30, was remanded in custody by Belfast magistrates in the case Wednesday, charged with attempted murder. The case was adjourned to July 8. Footage of the attack quickly spread online after being posted on X by far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — also known as Tommy Robinson — and then amplified by billionaire X-owner Elon Musk.

Tensions were already high across the UK. There were violent skirmishes in southern England last week over the police handling of the murder of a white student by a British Sikh man. Brendan, a 50-year-old plumber who joined the Belfast protests, said “nobody agrees with the violence”, as there had been enough during the decades of sectarian fighting over British rule of Northern Ireland, which ended in a 1998 peace deal.

But he added: “There’s nothing going to unite people more than crimes of inhumane acts like butchering people.” John, who declined to give his surname, said: “There’s now a united Ireland… united because the ordinary people have realised that, actually, we have been played like puppets.” He added the protesters were “genuinely concerned… we have an influx across Europe of migrants”.

Immigration is a hot-button issue in both the UK and Ireland, and has helped fuel the rise of the hard-right Reform UK party, led by Nigel Farage. Both countries have seen frequent anti-immigration protests in recent years, some turning violent.

Published in Dawn, June 12th, 2026