GENEVA (AP) — French and Swiss authorities will impose a week of pandemic-like border restrictions as U.S. President Donald Trump and other leaders attend a G7 summit starting Monday while organizers fear potentially violent protests.
The summit of some of the world's richest nations from June 15-17 in the French town of Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva is meant to discuss the Middle East, Ukraine and global economic imbalances.
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FILE - An aerial view of the Hotel Royal in the town of Evian-les-Bains in eastern France, Monday, June 1, 2026, where the upcoming G7 summit is due to take place June 15-17. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner, File)
A man walks past a mural against the upcoming G7 summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Construction workers board up a shop window, ahead of expected protests for the G7 summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
French police officers check people crossing the border between Geneva and the French town of Gaillard, France, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, ahead of the upcoming G7 summit due to take place June 15-17 in the town of Evian-les-Bains. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Pedestrians walk past the boarded-up windows of a shop, ahead of expected protests for the G7 summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
In nearby Geneva, Switzerland, business owners and local leaders want to avoid a repeat of violent protests that smashed storefronts on the sidelines of the G8 summit in 2003, when Russia was in the club of nations.
Protests are nothing new around such elite gatherings. This time, activists want to demonstrate frustration with Trump’s leadership on issues as diverse as tariffs, the war in Iran and the climate, or even highlight his past ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Authorities in Geneva and activist groups including environmentalists, feminists and foes of capitalism are facing off over the right to protest and the right to protection from those who target symbols of corporate and political power.
“As the G7 meets in Evian, France, to plan the destruction of peoples, the exploitation of life and the domination of bodies, let us organize our resistance against fascism and imperialism,” the No G7 coalition of anti-capitalism groups said in its call for a “large-scale internationalist mobilization against this meeting.”
Businesses have been boarding up storefronts in Geneva, a center for United Nations offices, while some institutions like the World Trade Organization, which faced anti-capitalist protests in Seattle in the 1990s, are closing offices and instructing staff to work remotely.
Switzerland, a rich Alpine country, is not among the G7 membership that includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S.
France and Switzerland have struck a military cooperation agreement on G7 summit security. The arriving leaders will pass through the airport in Geneva, which is 95% surrounded by France and connected to the rest of Switzerland by a strip of land.
The Swiss government said the army will deploy some 4,000 personnel to support police. Operations will include airspace restrictions, patrols on Lake Geneva and roadway restrictions. Seven of the 35 roadway border crossings will remain open. Geneva also is closing a major park where activists wanted to congregate.
France will deploy more than 13,000 police and gendarmerie officers to ensure security in the summit area just over the border. Over 800 French border control officers will be active, up from about 60 normally.
France also has introduced special permits for residents of Evian, perhaps best known for its bottled water, and environs while cordoning off a zone around the Hotel Royal where the leaders will meet.
There is an authorized march on June 14. Public gatherings not previously planned are banned.
Cedric Dupont, a professor of international relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said authorities were “overreacting” with such stringent security measures that will impact the economy and people, alluding to the long lines at the border during the COVID crisis.
“It seems that they have not learned the lesson,” he said, noting that protesters can find their way to Geneva by traveling from other parts of Switzerland. “It’s just creating more problems than actually solving them.”
Over 110,000 cross-border workers commute daily from France to Geneva, France's Foreign Ministry says.
French authorities have advised people to postpone nonessential travel and work from home when possible.
Lake crossings by boat, also used by commuters, have been moved from Evian to other ferry landings outside restricted areas. Recreational water activities, including paddleboarding and swimming, will be allowed outside the summit area as the summer season begins, authorities said.
The Geneva canton, or state, has set up a 6 million Swiss franc ($7.6 million) fund for businesses that incur damage related to G7 protests.
“Unrest cannot be ruled out,” authorities have said.
Corbet reported from Paris.
FILE - An aerial view of the Hotel Royal in the town of Evian-les-Bains in eastern France, Monday, June 1, 2026, where the upcoming G7 summit is due to take place June 15-17. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner, File)
A man walks past a mural against the upcoming G7 summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Construction workers board up a shop window, ahead of expected protests for the G7 summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, Monday, June 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
French police officers check people crossing the border between Geneva and the French town of Gaillard, France, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, ahead of the upcoming G7 summit due to take place June 15-17 in the town of Evian-les-Bains. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
Pedestrians walk past the boarded-up windows of a shop, ahead of expected protests for the G7 summit, in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Baz Ratner)
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — Police blasted water cannons Wednesday at protesters in Northern Ireland who set small fires and hurled bricks, rocks and bottles at them during a second night of violence over a brutal stabbing on a Belfast street.
Demonstrators wearing masks tore bricks from the walls outside homes and smashed sidewalks with sledgehammers to toss at riot police. In one place, the unruly crowd used sections of a dismantled picket fence to take cover on the street.
The clashes with police came several hours after a 30-year-old man from Sudan appeared in a Belfast court charged with attempted murder in a stabbing attack that left a man seriously injured and triggered anti-immigrant violence.
Hadi Alodid, 30, was ordered held in jail after appearing by video in Belfast Magistrates’ Court, where a detective said he blinded Stephen Ogilvie in the left eye during the knife attack. He was also charged with possessing a knife and threatening to kill a radiographer while being treated for a hand injury after the assault.
When police arrived at the crime scene, they found Alodid on the man, armed with a kitchen knife, the detective said. Alodid later told hospital staff: “I’ve killed someone, I don’t know if they are dead,” and said, “I will kill you."
He refused legal representation through an Arabic interpreter and did not enter a plea.
Police were prepared for more violence after masked men on Tuesday set fire to several homes they believed to house immigrants, burned trash bins, torched a Belfast bus and pelted police with objects.
Firefighters rescued several people from burning houses and more than two dozen people were left homeless.
Anselme Shima, a Belfast resident originally from Congo, said he saw smoke from burning vehicles near his home.
“I’ve lived on my street for almost 10 years, I have a good relationship with my neighbors, but last night was a horrific one,” he said. “We don’t know what to do. I’m scared. Seeing this, I’m wondering if I’m next.”
Families, one with a baby, were rescued and taken to police stations for safety, Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said.
“These weren’t just families from ethnic minority communities, these were families from across communities that were caught up in this vile behavior last night," Boutcher told the BBC. “There is absolutely no excuse for it.”
Boutcher said 200 more officers would be on the streets Wednesday and the PSNI was calling in support from other forces. Bus and train operators in Belfast said they would stop services early because of expected protests.
Ogilvie’s family appealed for an end to the violence and said migrants “make a deeply valuable contribution to our country.”
“We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility,” the family said in a statement.
Politicians from both parts of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government condemned the violence. First Minister Michelle O’Neill of Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein said it was “thuggery.”
“Groups of masked men burning families out of their homes is nothing less than disgusting cowardice,” she said.
Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, said that “taking frustration at the evil actions of a person out on those who had no part in it is utterly wrong.”
Monday’s attack, caught in video footage that quickly spread on social media, was seized on by anti-immigration activists. Ogilvie, a man in his 40s, was hospitalized with deep cuts to his head, face and back.
Police said Alodid entered Northern Ireland from the neighboring Republic of Ireland in 2023, applied for asylum and was given a five-year permit to remain.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said there is no information to suggest the attack was terrorism-related.
Protests were encouraged online by far-right activists, and the street violence erupted despite politicians' calls for calm.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the stabbing attack as “sickening,” but said violence against people based on their background would not be tolerated.
“The scenes in Belfast last night were shocking and completely unacceptable," Starmer said on X. “There is no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere.”
Northern Ireland Justice Minister Naomi Long said social media agitators who “yesterday would have struggled to find Belfast on a map” were “weaponizing” the fears of local people.
“If you’re driving people from their homes based on nothing but the color of their skin, you can’t dress that up any other way, it’s racism, and those bad faith actors need to take a step back,” she told the BBC.
Some politicians said the stabbing should spark a review of the open border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland.
The border is a highly sensitive issue. Allowing the free flow of people is a major pillar of the peace process that largely ended decades of violence known as “The Troubles.” The conflict involving Irish Republican and British Loyalist militants and U.K. security forces left almost 3,600 people dead before a 1998 peace accord.
Much of Tuesday’s violence took place in working-class areas where former paramilitary groups still hold considerable sway over the streets.
Last week a separate case of a university student who was stabbed to death in Southampton, England, in December was seized on by activists and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who blamed immigration for the violence, an idea rejected by Starmer and other British politicians.
Henry Nowak, who was white, was killed by Vickrum Digwa, a Sikh who falsely claimed to police that he was the victim of a racist assault by Nowak. When police officers arrived, they initially treated the wounded Nowak as a suspect before noticing his injury and trying to resuscitate him.
Digwa was convicted of murder and sentenced last week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term. A protest over Nowak’s death turned violent, with some attacking police with chairs and rocks. Several people were charged with violent disorder.
Lawless reported from London. Brian Melley contributed to this story.
Police fire a water cannon towards rioters after they set fire to wheelie bins and removed a garden fence to use as a shield against the water cannon in Newtownabbey, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday June 10, 2026. (PA via AP)
Jamie Corrie stands beside his burnt out house after rioting broke out late Tuesday, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, following a stabbing incident. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Vehicles set on fire by protesters burn on Lendrick Street in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, after the arrest of a Sudanese man accused of stabbing a man in the northern part of the city. (PA via AP)
People watch as firemen arrive to put out vehicle that was set alight during a protest in East Belfast following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
This is a court artist drawing by Elizabeth Cook of Sudanese national Hadi Alodid, 30 appearing via videolink at Belfast Magistrates Court, Belfast, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, after a stabbing attack. (Elizabeth Cook/PA via AP)
A worker clear up the debris in front of a burnt out bus, after rioting broke out late Tuesday, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, following a stabbing incident. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
A woman walks past burnt out houses after rioting broke out late Tuesday, in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, Wednesday, June 10, 2026, following a stabbing incident. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
People watch as a vehicle burns during a protest following a stabbing incident in North Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
A building is set light to by protesters in central Belfast following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Masked protesters stand by burning trash containers on Ligoniel Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, after the arrest of a Sudanese man accused of stabbing a man in the northern part of the city. (PA via AP)
Police vehicles come under attack from protesters following a stabbing incident in Belfast, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
Vehicles set on fire by protesters burn on Lendrick Street in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, after the arrest of a Sudanese man accused of stabbing a man in the northern part of the city. (PA via AP)
