In Dublin, the Irish capital, crowds of rioters have set police and public transport vehicles on fire over claims that a man who attacked three children at a school was not a native of the country.
After the knife attack on Thursday afternoon that left three youngsters and an adult woman injured, protesters started to gather in the city’s centre. A five-year-old child who was one of the victims was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries.
A guy in his 50s was taken into custody by police at the scene; while no details about him have been made public, Irish news site Gript revealed from police sources that the man is an Algerian national.
Riot police were sent in to control the demonstrators, but fighting quickly broke out and some of the policemen were attacked, according to RTE News. Police were attacked with fireworks and obstacles designed to keep masses of enraged residents at bay using riot shields.
Multiple reports state that arsonists targeted a tram, at least two double-decker buses, and many police cars in addition to setting them on fire.
Along with smashing the front window of a building housing migrants, groups of hooded rioters also assaulted police lines with burning dumpsters.
Police Commissioner Drew Harris called the rioters “a complete lunatic hooligan faction driven by far right ideology” and denounced the “disgraceful scenes.” Those in charge of the disturbances, according to Harris, “will be dealt with properly.”
A week before to the stabbing and ensuing disturbance, Josef Puska, a Romani immigrant from Slovakia, was given a life sentence for the savage murder of a lady in the town of Tullamore in January.
A growing number of public outbursts in Dublin have resulted from Ireland’s struggle to house and integrate hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers. These include violent clashes at an illegal migrant squat in the city earlier this year, which led to locals demolishing the “shanty town,” and repeated protests outside an accommodation centre for single male migrants last November.
The Central Statistics Office’s most recent data indicates that between April 2022 and April 2023, almost 141,000 immigrants arrived in Ireland. A record 13,651 individuals applied for refuge in Ireland last year; the bulk of these individuals were from Georgia, Somalia, and Syria.
