“Women ‌and kids are terrified and in shock,” said Twasul Mohammed, who came to Northern Ireland from Sudan as a refugee in 2016. “We are keeping our kids at home, I haven’t sent my kids to school since this has happened.”

Violence flared on Tuesday following a knife attack for which a Sudanese man has been charged with attempted murder. That evening, masked groups ​moved through parts of Belfast, setting fire to houses and cars and targeting ethnic minorities. Smaller outbreaks of unrest followed on Wednesday, with fears the ​violence could continue in the coming days.

Britain’s minister for Northern Ireland said the anti-migrant attacks were “racist thuggery”.

People targeted who have fled war

For many in Belfast’s migrant communities, the unrest echoes trauma they had hoped to leave behind.

“You have to remember we are talking about communities where ​people have fled war in their own country and people have experienced this kind of thing again and again,” Mohammed told Reuters.

“Immigrants are not the problem, ​we are not causing the housing crisis or the health service. Every one of us wants to be a part of this community and help build it.”

Northern Ireland endured three decades of conflict between mainly Catholic Irish nationalists and predominantly Protestant pro-British loyalists. In recent years, some community organisers say, sectarian tensions have increasingly been replaced by hostility towards ethnic minorities.

“This ​is a deeply divided society already,” said Patricia McKeown, regional secretary for the public sector union Unison. “This is a society that is not yet post conflict, ​and…the most base instincts of ordinary people is being appealed to by some very dark and sinister forces.”

Union volunteers helped evacuate at least 15 families from their homes on Tuesday ‌and another ⁠15 on Wednesday after they feared they would be targeted, she said.

Workers have also reported being stopped by vigilante patrols in the streets, particularly near hospitals, she added.

“We have workers being stopped by vigilante patrols in the streets of Belfast, particularly outside hospitals, … checking their ethnicity, videoing their registration numbers,” she said.

“We have workers being followed to and from work. And last night we had a nurse chased by four masked men in one of the large hospitals in the east ​of the city … This is hatred ​that is putting lives at risk.”

Community response

However, McKeown says the violence aimed at ethnic minorities - Northern Ireland is 97% white according to a 2021 census - was also bringing the best out of the community.

Ruchira Rangaprasad, who moved to Northern Ireland from India three years ago, said ​she had been inundated with offers of help after she started posting on social media that she would provide ​cooked meals to families.

She ⁠said more than 30 volunteers - most of them strangers - stepped forward to help distribute dozens of food boxes on Wednesday.

“People are scared to step out of their home, and food is like a basic need, and especially like nutritious home-cooked food … so that’s why I thought, let me cook and help feed people,” she said.

Kashif Akram, ⁠a member ​of the executive committee at the Belfast Islamic Centre, said the response showed a different side ​of the city.

“It’s heartbreaking. At the same time Belfast is full of a lot of decent people,” Akram, 44, who was born in Northern Ireland and always lived there, told Reuters. “The people who ​are spreading the hate at the moment, they are a minority, there are very few.”