Hatchet used in suspected racist attack in Belfast

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/25/hatchet-suspected-racist-attack-belfast

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A hatchet has been thrown through the window of a Nigerian family's home in central Belfast in a suspected racist attack.

The attack on a woman and her two children happened in the loyalist Sandy Row area close to the city centre at around 2am on Wednesday morning.

It is the second such assault in the city in just over a month after a house where two Nigerian men lived in east Belfast came under attack.

In the latest incident Adenike Yisa was on the sofa in the living room at the front of her home when a hatchet was smashed through it.

"I was really, really upset," she said. "I have never been in that situation in my life. I only moved into that house about a year ago and never had any trouble.

"When I heard the noise I thought it was a shot, then I saw the axe or hatchet and the big hole in my window. I was screaming at the top of my voice and shaking like a leaf. Luckily my children were in their rooms.

"I didn't see whoever did this, but think it was because of the colour of my skin," the 40-year-old said.

No one was injured in the attacked but Yisa said she and her children had been traumatised by the attack.

Yisa has lived in Belfast for about 10 years and moved to her home in Sandy Row – one of the oldest loyalist working-class areas of the city – about 12 months ago.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed they were treating the incident as a hate crime.

Almost all such attacks in Belfast occur in loyalist working-class districts. They are usually the work of "freelance" racists who live there and object to the presence of foreigners, rather than any co-ordinated campaign by neo-Nazi groups.

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