silverguide.site –

For four hours, Ugandan care workers Sumayah Nakazibwe and Stella Ariokot were barricaded into their house near Crumlin Road in north Belfast, smelling smoke leaking into their homes, and watching flames lick the walls of neighbouring properties.

“It all started like people were just marching, young boys between the age of nine and 20,” Nakazibwe said. “They were all putting on black, and masked.”

They watched from their window as the mob burned the tyres of a bus. “And then they collected the bins outside and then started also burning them,” she said. “And then we were like, maybe it will not escalate.”

But then the mob turned on to their street, where Romanian and Nigerian families also live, alongside British and Irish families.

“They started burning, petrol-bombing, the cars,” she said. “So when the smoke started, it was just coming direct to our houses. So we called the police, we called the fire brigade.”

There were so many fires being started across the city that it took the fire brigade about 30 minutes to arrive.

“It was so, so, so terrifying,” Nakazibwe said, as they watched the flames take hold of nearby houses. Emergency services told them it was too dangerous for them to attempt to leave, but suggested to them that they put on their care worker uniforms in case it may help to placate any rioters who broke into the house.

“Someone who is actually rioting doesn’t know that the person they are targeting is actually looking after their mother or their granny,” Nakazibwe said. “Meanwhile, I left my mother back home.”

At one point, Nakazibwe collapsed from fear. “When they now started throwing the stones on to our windows, she passed out,” Ariokot said.

“I had to stay on the line talking to the ambulance people, and they were directing me what to do but thank God she woke up.”

It was only when a church pastor came down to the scene and was able to speak to the men that it was safe enough for them to be evacuated from their property.

Pastor Jack McKee, from New Life City Church, had not wanted to go out on to the streets as riots broke out but when he heard that one of his congregation was in trouble, he set off in the car to help.

“When I got there, I mean it was horrendous, four fire engines, police officers in riot gear, a crowd of guys standing, masked up, bricks in their hands, ambulance having to park a way down the road where they couldn’t even drive to the house,” he said.

“A house completely burned down; we had to go under the hoses in order to get into the house to get these women out.”

“There were like 20 guys, all masked up, with bricks in their hands, and it looked like they were there for some fight, so I had to go over and talk to them,” he said. “And I pleaded with them to give me 10 minutes to let me get these women out and get them into my car.”

“They gave me those 10 minutes,” he said. “In fact, some of them actually dropped their bricks on to the ground and they gave me the 10 minutes and let me get them in the car.”

The women, who stayed with McKee and his family last night, were “totally traumatised,” he said.

“I never thought that I’d have to be going to rescue Christian people, in a Protestant community, being attacked,” he added.

“I understand there are good people out there, the people who are actually rioting do not represent the whole community, Nakazibwe said, just as “the immigrant who really did that [attack], does not represent all of us.”

However, today, she said “I wouldn’t go out, for safety, it’s not safe.”

“To me it was a very peaceful place until yesterday,” she added, “like it really changed my mind. It is just too much, I felt like maybe I’m just giving up, like maybe it’s high time I go home.”

At the street off the Shankill Road where a Romanian family was forced out of their home, evidence of last night’s disorder was abundant.

The shell of a burnt-out car, which neighbours said belonged to the same family, sat outside, while windows were shattered, and others were boarded up. The home had been targeted twice previously, most recently “a couple of months ago.”

“And they wouldn’t go, so last night was the last straw,” one neighbour said. On Tuesday night, the house was pelted with bricks, and lit fireworks were shoved through the letterbox.

Another neighbour who lived on the street, a woman, helped the family to escape to safety after men in balaclavas broke down the door.

“They were told to get out, and they were put out twice, and they didn’t go,” the neighbour said.

She said she didn’t know where the family had been moved to, saying: “it’s not our problem now, they’re not here now.”

The house next door, where a black family lived, also had smashed and boarded-up windows, which neighbours said had been caused by the original fire spreading.

That family also fled their home, and a neighbour moved their car to a place of safety.

Across town in east Belfast, off Newtownards Road, several houses had been boarded up, while burnt debris littered the streets.

Romanian and Sudanese families were among those who had had to leave their homes, neighbours said.

“There was a mob out on the street and the police … were actually chased out of the street. How can you have guns and stuff, and there’s somebody chasing you out of a street?”

A charity worker who was out on the streets in the aftermath of the violence said the families had been taken to safety by police and were still with police until they could be put into temporary accommodation.

One neighbour said that specific houses where ethnic minority families lived had been targeted, and that Catholics had come to this largely Loyalist area to join in with the violence.

“That’s a first,” he said. “We fought each other for 30 years, but they see the fear factor too.”