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.
Mayhem in my hometown tonight, I've never seen anything like it here, absolute scum.
Yes I was quite amazed to read about this. In your view, is the anti-immigrant sentiment targetting Ukraininans or is it broader than that?
I hope you stay safe!
These feral scumbags get riled up misleadingly on twitter and tic tok and use our governments failure to build enough housing as an excuse to target any non Irish group, it wasn't a protest it was an opportunity for them to loot and wreck the city they claim to love
Thanks for the explanation.
Ugh. Social media can be a blessing or a curse, increasingly the latter when its fueled by hate-driven algorithms.
Warnings about a surge of hate posts targeting Dublin on swastika (X, formerly twitter) were posted within hours of the attack.
That's interesting. Sounds like it was coordinated then.