Moment two firefighters fight with each other as their colleagues battle lorry blaze during Belfast riots
Two firefighters in Belfast have been caught on camera having a punch-up while battling a lorry blaze during last night’s riots.
Helicopter footage of the fire inadvertently captured the two firemen – both clad in full protective uniform including helmets – pushing and shoving behind one of their fire engines.
The men had to be split up by colleagues, but only after one had managed to land a headbutt.
The incident was on Sky News last night and has since gone viral.
It came after riots broke out across Northern Ireland following the Belfast knife attack where a Sudanese asylum seeker was accused of trying to behead Stephen Ogilvie, who is stable in hospital but has lost his left eye.
Emergency services across the province have been dealing with violent disorder ever since the knife attack on Monday night.
And in dealing with a related fire in Belfast, two of the city’s firefighters were filmed having a bizarre fight while at work dealing with the riots.
Helicopter footage captured the two firefighters going head-to-head as smoke rises from a fire engine only meters away
The altercation broke out out after one man shoves the other, leading the other to retaliate
The men can be seen at the rear of the fire engine altercating, with one headbutting the other, before another man intervenes to separate them
The two men went head-to-head as colleagues aimed their hoses at a blazing refuse truck.
The altercation began when one man rushed up to the other and began shoving him.
The other retaliated angrily by pushing him back.
The camera then pans away from the firefighters – who are both dressed in uniform – to the surrounding scene of their colleagues attempting to extinguish the fire in what appears to be.
The men can then be seen at the rear of the fire engine still brawling, leading to one headbutting the other before a fellow firefighter intervenes to break them up.
A Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue (NIFRS) spokesperson said they were ‘aware of an altercation at an incident yesterday evening (Wednesday 10 June),’ however, do not ‘comment on individual employee matters.’
The altercation comes as rioting in Belfast continued into a second night following the the arrest of a Sudanese migrant over a brutal knife attack in the city on Monday evening.
Asylum seeker Hadi Alodid, 30, has been charged with attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvie, who lost his left eye and sustained deep cuts to his head, face and back during the alleged attack.
Alodid, who appeared in at Belfast Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, was also charged with threatening to kill an NHS radiographer on the same day and with possessing a knife.
Stephen Ogilvie lost an eye following the attack and suffered injuries to his back, neck and face in the attempted ‘beheading’ at around 10.30pm on Monday
He did not enter a plea and refused legal representation using an Arabic interpreter.
The attack, which occurred on Kinnaird Avenue in the Northern Irish capital, has led to consecutive nights of rioting that has seen homes torched, police officers injured and vehicles set on fire.
Anti-immigration rioters descended on Lendrick street – a Loyalist area in east Belfast – on Tuesday evening due to the high number of migrants living there in recent years.
Protestors, many hooded and masking their faces, ransacked homes and torched cars belonging to ‘foreigners’ – leaving families forced to flee or cower as the chaos took place.
At least three terraced houses were set alight and cars set ablaze.
On Wednesday, violent clashes between the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and protestors took place, with officers in Glengormley spraying aggressors with water cannons and rubber bullets while coming under attack from hundreds of missiles and flaming hazards.
Protesters torched a building and several vehicles in the same area, which was the main flashpoint of the evening.
Trouble first flared when a crowd tried to march on the Chimney Corner Hotel, which houses asylum seekers, but met formations of police vehicles blocking off Antrim Road.
Rioters began charging the police lines – forcing officers to shield behind their armoured Land Rovers.
The rabble aimed traffic cones, wheelie bins, bricks, bottles and fireworks at police, using sledgehammers to arm themselves with debris from buildings and fences.
