A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a knife attack in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Monday night, according to the police.
The man, who the police said is in his 30s and Sudanese, is alleged to have attacked another man, in his 40s. The victim is currently in the hospital in serious condition, the police said. The police had originally said that the attacker was believed to be Somali before releasing an updated statement at midday on Tuesday.
Ryan Henderson, assistant chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, said in a statement that the police were still working to determine a motive.
“This brutal attack will have sent shock waves through the community, causing real concern,” he said. “I want to reassure the local community that we are treating this attack with the utmost seriousness.”
Graphic video footage of the attack spread quickly on social media and prompted outrage from some commenters. In the clip, a bystander can be seen approaching the attacker and battering him with a hurley, a long wooden stick used in the Irish sport of hurling.
The knife attack was quickly condemned by politicians across the political spectrum in Northern Ireland. Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain called the incident “sickening,” in a post on social media. He said he had “absolutely no tolerance for abhorrent scenes of violence like this on our streets.”
Hilary Benn, the cabinet minister for Northern Ireland, said in Parliament on Tuesday that all sides had the responsibility to urge calm. He cautioned against attempts to use the assault to stir up anti-immigrant sentiment and “seek disorder on the streets of Northern Ireland.”
“I say that because we have seen it before and we do not wish to see it again,” he added.
The police said that the knife attack occurred around 10:30 p.m. on Monday outside an apartment complex in northern Belfast and that officers arrived at the scene within minutes. They did not identify the victim, who they said had suffered significant injuries to his face, neck and back.
Despite the calls for restraint, a number of far-right activists posted video of the stabbing, using the footage to press anti-immigrant views.
The attack occurred against a backdrop of heightened tensions in the United Kingdom over acts of violence. The stabbing of Henry Nowak in the city of Southampton, southern England, in December fueled outrage and became increasingly politicized online last week after footage was released showing him being handcuffed by the police as he lay dying. The right-wing lawmaker Nigel Farage claimed that the police’s initial response — in which they believed the attacker, a British-born Sikh man, instead of the victim — was evidence of “anti-white prejudice.”
The day after the footage was released, a night of protest devolved into violence in Southampton.
On Tuesday morning, after the Belfast attack, Mr. Farage posted on social media, saying: “The authorities must reveal the identity and status of the attacker immediately. The public are entitled to the truth.”
Local leaders in Northern Ireland issued a joint statement saying that they were “committed to ensuring that violence and hatred in any form will not be allowed to divide our communities.”
Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, asked residents to give the police service “the space it needs to carry out a full investigation so that justice can be done.” Emma Little-Pengally, the deputy first minister, called for calm “in what is clearly a tense and worrying situation.”
The two leaders are from the two sides of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government and represent the region’s primary political groups.
The neighborhood where the attack occurred had been a hotbed of the decades-long sectarian violence that gripped Northern Ireland during the Troubles. But in the decades since peace was forged between the mostly Catholic nationalist community and the mostly Protestant unionist community, Belfast and the broader region has become increasingly multicultural.