Riots spread to more UK towns and cities

Riots spread to more UK towns and cities


Riots spread to more UK towns and cities by timesbg

London quiet as police step up presence on the streets, but police station firebombed and shops looted elsewhere.

Last Modified: 09 Aug 2011 23:47

Riots flared overnight in some English cities and towns but London was mostly calm as thousands of police deployed on its streets following three nights of rioting and looting in the British capital.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, is due to host another meeting of the government's meeting of the government's crisis committee, COBRA, to address the violence on Wednesday.

Police have made 1,069 arrests across the country in response to the trouble, including 768 in London, 109 in the West Midlands and 90 in Nottingham. At least 167 people have been charged so far.

In Salford, part of greater Manchester in northwest England, rioters threw bricks at police and set fire to buildings on Tuesday night.
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Television pictures showed flames leaping from shops and cars in Salford and Manchester, and plumes of thick black smoke billowing across roads.

In central Manchester, police said a clothes shop was set alight. "I can confirm a shop is on fire and 200 youths that gathered in the city centre have been chased by riot police and dispersed. Seven arrests have been made so far," a spokesman for Greater Manchester Police said.

Further south in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton, cars were burned and stores raided.

A gang of up to 40 men firebombed a police station in the central English city of Nottingham but no injuries were reported, police said. At least 90 arrests were made and 10 police cars damaged in the city.

"Canning Circus Police Station (in central Nottingham) fire bombed by a group of 30-40 males. No reports of injuries at this stage," said Nottinghamshire Police in a message on their official Twitter feed.

A message later said the fire had been extinguished and eight people had been arrested.

In Liverpool, a Reuters reporter saw police with riot shields pushing back youths hurling bricks. Police said four fire engines were attacked.

In the western city of Gloucester, police and firefighters tackled a blaze and disturbance in the city's Brunswick district.

London 'quiet'

London was mostly quiet after a huge boost in police numbers on Tuesday evening which saw 16,000 officers on the streets, compared to the 6,000 out on Monday night.

Commuters hurried home early, shops shut and many shopkeepers boarded their windows as the city prepared nervously for more of the violence that had erupted in its neighbourhoods.

Police arrested 81 people overnight, across London, for various offences, filling the city's cells to capacity four nights since the trouble started.

Also, many Londoners took to the streets in their hundreds to defend their communities.

Hundreds of Sikhs, many dressed in traditional outfits, gathered outside their gurdwara, or temple, in Southall, west London, after earlier rumours circulated it was next on the looters' hitlist.

Around 200 locals in Enfield, the north London borough at the heart of previous attacks, strode through the area to "protect their streets", an AFP correspondent said.

The group became involved in a "minor skirmish" with a group of youths which it accused of taking part in criminal activity, the Guardian newspaper reported.
Londoners counted the cost of the pillaging and tried
to clear up the mess on Tuesday [AFP]

Amateur video footage released on Wednesday showed a group of around 100 men running down an Enfield street chanting "England, England, England".

A similar number of people congregated in the south-east suburb of Eltham, also rumoured to be a likely hot spot.

"This is a white working class area and we are here to protect our community," one man told the Guardian .

"We are here to help the police. My mum is terrified after what she saw on the television in the last three days and we decided that it's not going to happen here," he said.

Sales of baseball bats and police batons shot up more than 5,000 per cent on Amazon's British website.

In the north London districts of Hackney and Kentish Town, mainly Turkish shopkeepers sat outside their shops into the early hours, many with makeshift weapons by their side.

Other Londoners tried to clear up the mess.

Hundreds of volunteers carrying brooms, dustpans, rubber gloves and black bags gathered on Tuesday morning in Clapham, south of the River Thames, to help clean up.

Parliament recalled

Cameron, who returned early from a holiday in Tuscany to deal with the crisis, told reporters: "This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted and defeated. People should be in no doubt that we will do everything necessary to restore order to Britain's streets."

Cameron has also recalled parliament from its summer recess, a rare move.

"It's us versus them, the police, the system. They call it looting and criminality. It's not that. There's a real hatred against the system"

Hackney youth

The unrest poses a new challenge to Cameron as Britain's economy struggles to grow while his government slashes public spending and raises taxes to cut a yawning budget deficit - moves that some commentators say have aggravated the plight of young people in inner cities.

It also shows the world an ugly side of London less than a year before it hosts the 2012 Olympic Games, an event that officials hope will serve as a showcase for the city in the way that April's royal wedding did.

On Tuesday, London's police said they would consider using rubber or plastic bullets.

Local member of parliament David Lammy said he was asking Blackberry to suspend its messaging service.

Youth gangs were reported to be co-ordinating their movements though social networks - particularly secure-access Blackberry Messenger groups - and targeting shops.

Police 'under pressure'

The first riots broke out on Saturday in north London's Tottenham neighbourhood, when a peaceful protest over the fatal shooting by police of a 29-year-old man, Mark Duggan, two days earlier led to violence.

While the police have been accused of failing to bring the situation under control by going in softly to spare local sensibilities, they are likely to come under renewed pressure over the Duggan incident after a watchdog said on Tuesday there was no evidence that a handgun retrieved at the scene had been fired.

Reports initially suggested that Duggan had shot at police.
In video

Charlie Angela reports on the escalating violence in the UK [Al Jazeera]

"There are pretty tough questions confronting the politicians," said Tim Friend, Al Jazeera's correspondent in London. "It will be concerning police and politicians greatly whether what's happening outside London has anything to do with the shooting [of Mark Duggan], is doubtful at the moment."

Tottenham includes areas with the highest unemployment rates in London. It also has a history of racial tension with local young people, especially blacks, resenting police behaviour.

"It's us versus them, the police, the system," said one youth at a grim housing estate in the London district of Hackney, the epicentre of Monday night's rioting.

"They call it looting and criminality. It's not that. There's a real hatred against the system." His friends, some covering their faces with hoods, nodded in agreement.

The London 2012 Organising Committee hosted an International Olympic Committee visit "as planned" on Tuesday and said the violence would not hurt preparations for the Olympics.

However, other sporting events suffered. England cancelled Wednesday's international soccer friendly with the Netherlands and three club games were also called off.

Source:Al Jazeera and agencies / Bulgaria Today