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 Tuesday night's attempted murder will feed into Ulster's complex and febrile political matrix is yet to be seen.

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.'

Much of the modern housing in the Kinnaird area off the Antrim Road was built after the removal of a huge British Army base on the site.

The scene of the attack is beside Girdwood Community Hub, which was opened in 2016, replacing the former Girdwood Army base which once loomed over the area, protected by high walls and sangars (fortified watchtowers) and covering 14 acres.

The base was one of the most prominent military sites in Belfast and when it closed in 2005 as part of the peace process, it was home to 40 infantry and 16 civilian staff.

According to the Irish News, disputes ensued over whether the social housing which would replace it would be allocated to the unionist or republican communities.

In 2016 the new community hub opened following 10 years of rows over what to do with the barracks.

It was hailed as transforming a ‘contested space into a shared space’ in an area straddling one of Belfast’s most incendiary interfaces.

Since then, the area has been the scene of some sectarian clashes.

Last year, a number of Catholic families were forced out of new homes which were built as a supposed shared space in nearby Alloa Street and Annalee Street.

When the Irish News visited last September there was only one Catholic family remaining there following a campaign of intimidation by loyalist paramilitaries.

In 2019 two men were brutally killed in the apartments at Kinnaird Close. Steven Arthur McBrine was jailed for 11 years for the double manslaughter of a man he had been drinking with.

He stabbed Frances Murray with a broken vodka bottle and beat Joseph Dutton to death.

The riots which exploded across Belfast occurred in both republican 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.

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.'