The scene of the hideous attack in north Belfast is set within a tinderbox, almost directly on the ‘interface’ between two nationalist and loyalist communities where paramilitary violence was widespread in Ulster’s dark past.
Kinnaird Avenue, where the incident took place in front of horrified residents and passers-by, is in a predominantly nationalist area near the staunchly republican New Lodge estate to the east.
Yet it’s also only a five-minute walk away from the Lower Shankill, a traditionally loyalist district.
The small block of flats where the victim Stephen Ogilvie lived is in Kinnaird Court, just off the avenue.
Yesterday one of the windows of his first-floor flat was boarded up with wooden sheets.
The alleged attacker, Hadi Alodid, 30, a migrant who entered the UK by the ‘back door’, travelling from Sudan to Paris, then onto Dublin and by bus to Belfast in 2023, was rumoured to have moved into another flat in the block very recently.
North Belfast remains a patchwork of tribal areas, with the only clue for the outsider usually being the huge gable-end murals supporting one side or the other in the decades-old troubles. While in loyalist areas the union flag is draped from lampposts, the Irish tricolour bedecks the streets in republican areas.
Similarly, kerbstones are daubed in the same colours to demarcate each territorial boundary.
How the violent reaction to yesterday’s attempted murder will feed into Ulster’s complex and febrile political matrix is yet to be seen.
The scene of the hideous attack in north Belfast is set within a tinderbox, almost directly on the ‘interface’ between two nationalist and loyalist communities where paramilitary violence was widespread in Ulster’s dark past
Hadi Alodid appeared in court via videolink and was charged with attempted murder and possession of a knife, as well as a separate charge of making threats to kill an NHS radiographer
Stephen Ogilvie lost his left eye in the attack and has sustained deep cuts to his head, face and back
One local told the Daily Mail that he’d even witnessed the astonishing sight of republican and loyalist groups appearing to hold friendly discussions shortly before the mayhem erupted.
‘I had a call from a friend of mine this evening and he said “you’ve got to come and see this”,’ he said.
‘I went and met him and he pointed over to a group of men standing on the street. There were four or five guys with Celtic shirts on and they were chatting to a load of guys with Rangers jackets on.
‘I grew up during the troubles. That’s practically unheard of. Even in this day and age. There’s something happening in Belfast at the moment.
‘It’s a strange time.’
The riots which exploded across Belfast occurred in both nationalist and loyalist areas, though migrant families appeared to be more the target of the violence from the loyalist rioters.
Just a petrol bomb’s throw from Kinnaird Avenue is the historic major interface of Duncairn Gardens between republican New Lodge and the next-door loyalist Tiger’s Bay area, which has been one of the city’s worst flashpoints in the past.
Clashes there date back to the early 1970s when local ‘defence associations’ in the loyalist areas later became part of the outlawed Ulster Defence Association. In the republican areas, the Provisional IRA ruled the roost with a fist of iron.
Duncairn Gardens was for two decades the site of a huge 7m high and 70m long so-called ‘peace wall’ to separate the warring factions, but more recently, in 2021 it was reduced in size to a much smaller barricade.
Under an agreement called the Common Travel Area (CTA), the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is not policed or guarded and free movement is possible, which has also allowed migrants and asylum seekers to criss-cross between the two at will.
Hero Matt McKiernan was armed only with a wooden stick when he led a trio of members of the public to rescue the attacker’s victim from death
Police officers search the scene of a stabbing on Kinnaird Avenue in north Belfast
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said yesterday: ‘The CTA means the UK relies on the Republic of Ireland to secure its border, and any weakness in the Irish border is also a weakness in ours.
‘Clearly a lot more needs to be done to prevent the CTA operating as a backdoor to the UK for illegal immigrants. We need a review into border security measures in the interests of the UK and the Republic of Ireland.’
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