Jewish graves at Belfast cemetery damaged by vandals

Graves at the Jewish plot in Belfast City Cemetery have been destroyed in a «systematic» attack.

Headstones and surrounds were knocked over and smashed in the attack on 13 graves on Friday afternoon.

Broken beer bottles and cans were also strewn around the plot. Police were called to the cemetery on the Falls Road in the west of the city at around 3pm after a member of the public noticed the damage. The police said they were treating the attack as a hate crime and appealed for information.

Sinn Féin councillor Steven Corr said he believed up to a dozen «drunken louts» were responsible.

Corr, who visited the plot, said the damage was «systematic» and «anti-community».

«They were going around knocking over surrounds around the graves. Some were trying to smash the concrete slabs covering the graves.

«The graves are in a secluded spot in the cemetery. Some of them were 100 years old,» he said.

Belfast City Council, which operates the cemetery, said it was aware of the criminal damage.

A spokeswoman said a clean-up operation had begun and would continue. The cemetery is patrolled by park wardens working with community safety officers.

The Catholic Bishop of Belfast Noel Treanor also condemned the destruction of 13 Jewish graves in Belfast as «shameful».

Treanor told massgoers in Belfast on Sunday that «these shameful acts are a blemish on our society.»

He said condemnation was not enough.

«What a tragedy and blemish then that the long-present, beloved and treasured Jewish families of our community should suffer yet again such actions of disrespect, violence to the memory of their beloved dead and the regrettable outworking of a latent xenophobia that stalks the minds of some.»

«Failure to address such attitudes to others is not worthy of a Christian culture and people. Racism and xenophobia are issues of our times,» he added.

Before becoming bishop in his native Northern Ireland, Treanor was for many years, head of the Catholic Church’s representation office at the European Union in Brussels and a longstanding promoter of interfaith dialogue.