Police are treating the incident on Church Green as a racially motivated hate crime.<\/p>\n
Mr Al Omare and his family have since moved out of their property and the bus driver says he will not return to the local area and plans to move his wife and children to west Belfast.<\/p>\n
He told the Irish News that relations between his family and a number of residents of the Holywood housing estate had not been good in the two years since they moved in.<\/p>\n Mr Al Omare and his family moved to Northern Ireland nine years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has been going on for the last two years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople in the estate attacked us, they spoke about religion and skin colour. They hit my wife because she was wearing a hijab.<\/p>\n \u201cI was told not to let my children play in the estate and that we were not welcome here.<\/p>\n \u201cThe children are feeling very bad, very scared.<\/p>\n \u201cI will never go back to that house or to Holywood or east Belfast because I don\u2019t feel safe there.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel safer in west Belfast and I hope to be there soon.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Al Omare said he had reported various incidents of alleged intimidation and abuse to the PSNI on at least 16 occasions in the last two years.<\/p>\n He added that one young person had threatened one family member that they would \u201ckill your family\u201d.<\/p>\n Footage of an altercation between members of his family and a number of other individuals in Holywood was shared on social media on Sunday, including accounts associated with anti-immigration networks.<\/p>\n He said his daughter had experienced \u201csevere psychological distress\u201d as a result of the incident.<\/p>\n Mr Al Omare\u2019s wife Saja said she believes the attack on their home on Sunday night was \u201cplanned in advance\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cNo family should ever have to experience such fear, violence and intimidation simply for trying to keep their children safe,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The PSNI have described the attack on the family home as \u201cutterly unacceptable and has no place in our society\u201d.<\/p>\n The force said it had received a second report of a connected attack on a home on the same night. Two windows were smashed at the property while a quantity of cash was also stolen in the second attack.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are treating both of these reports as racially-motivated hate crimes, with our enquiries continuing into what happened, and who was involved,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis type of crime is utterly unacceptable and has no place in our society. Everyone has the right to feel safe in their home, regardless of their race or background.\u201d<\/p>\n Alliance MLA Andrew Muir has described the race hate attacks as \u201crepugnant\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cHolywood is a shared and inclusive place, and this kind of violence and intimidation does not reflect the views of the vast majority of people in the town who are absolutely appalled to see this occur,\u201d the North Down MLA said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Glider bus driver and Syrian national says his family were forced out of their home after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583637,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,246485,1629,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-583636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-holywood","tag-immigration","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/LS75QCFJNRDEPK5NYYT3NROWEE.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"Republic’s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2XUWUCIDHVEFLJHU7HHCGWIRGQ.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Residents](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/A7E3A3UYZ5GU5FCJGWEEPR6O5E.jpg\")
Residents leave their home after its windows were smashed and the property was vandalised with a substance in an overnight racist attack on Church Road, Holywood. PICTURE: BRIAN LINCOLN <\/p>\n