Three young children were among five people injured in a knife attack in Dublin on Thursday that sparked riots in the city centre and which police have not yet ruled out any motive over, including whether it could be terror-related.
Public transport was suspended and patients advised not to travel to a nearby maternity hospital unless absolutely necessary after clashes between riot police and anti-immigrant protesters, who arrived at the scene of the attack beside the main thoroughfare of O'Connell Street.
A double decker bus was burned to the ground in front of the Daniel O'Connell statue at the head of the street and windows were smashed at a nearby Holiday Inn hotel and McDonalds restaurant. A Footlocker store was looted.
"They are disgraceful scenes. We have a complete lunatic, hooligan faction driven by far right ideology engaged in serious violence," Police Commissioner Drew Harris told reporters after deploying 400 officers to restore public order.
A police car was also burnt out.
Such rioting is almost unprecedented in Dublin. There are no far right parties or politicians elected to parliament, but small anti-immigrant protests have grown in the last year. The government is reviewing security around parliament after a recent protest trapped lawmakers inside.
Harris said all lines of inquiry related to the attack remained open, contradicting a senior officer who had earlier told reporters that police were satisfied the incident was not terror-related.
I feel like I'm missing something here. A crazy guy knifes a bunch of kids, the cops come in and take care of it appropriately, and loads of unrelated people choose to... Checks notes Riot about immigration. Why?
We're the kids immigrants? Was the attacker? Was everyone involved Irish? None of the articles I've seen say anything about it.
Can someone who knows more fill in some of these gaps?
I think perhaps the crowd thought the attacker was from an ethnic minority.
None of the mainstream papers are saying, so I just held my nose and checked a tabloid, which coyly said that there are "rumours" the attacker is an immigrant.
Whereas we know one of the rescuers was an immigrant: https://www.thejournal.ie/motorcyclist-hero-stops-school-stabbing-6231383-Nov2023/?utm_source=shortlink