THERE was a second straight night of racist violence on the streets of Belfast on Wednesday following the knife attack by Hadi Alodid on Stephen Ogilvie that blinded the victim and left him hospitalised.

Police blasted water cannon at protesters in Northern Ireland who set small fires and hurled bricks, rocks and bottles at them.

Masked demonstrators tore bricks from the walls outside homes and smashed pavements with sledgehammers to attack riot police. In one place, the thugs used sections of a dismantled picket fence to take cover on the street.

The fresh clashes came hours after Mr Ogilvie’s family appealed for an end to the violence and said migrants “make a deeply valuable contribution to our country.”

“We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,” the family said in a statement.

Once again, the hooligans targeted homes in working-class areas of East Belfast which they believed housed immigrants.

Loyalist paramilitary groups still reportedly hold considerable sway over the streets.

“Very poor white people” are being convinced that “very poor, hard-working brown or black people” are responsible for the “problems caused by billionaire white men,” Allison Morris, crime correspondent at the Belfast Telegraph, told Channel 4 News today.

In a statement, the Communist Party of Ireland said it was shocked by both the stabbing and the racist violence that followed.

“Organised loyalist elements and far-right agitators have sought to exploit this incident to spread fear and division,” the statement said.

The party said it was alarmed to hear reports of “lists containing the names and addresses of migrant families being circulated,” adding that “whatever differences may exist regarding migration policy, there can be no justification for the targeting of families, the circulation of personal details, or threats against individuals and communities.

“Such actions represent an assault on basic democratic rights and have no place in a civilised society.”

Gerry Murphy, the assistant general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), labelled the two nights of violence as “raw racism.”

Mr Murphy said: “We stand with all families whose property has been targeted and their safety put in danger by thugs hiding their faces behind masks and scarves.”

He added that the ICTU stands “against the criminals who are attacking people, property and public services. We also stand against those who feed these flames with loose talk about ‘illegal immigration,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘alien cultures’.”