Britain burns: Riots spread through UK cities
By DAVID STRINGER - Associated Press, RAPHAEL G. SATTER - Associated Press | AP – 1 hr 11 mins ago
LONDON (AP) — A wave of violence and looting raged across London and spread to three other major British cities on Tuesday, as authorities struggled to contain the country's worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.
In London, groups of young people rampaged for a third straight night, setting buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps alight, looting stores and pelting police officers with bottles and fireworks. The spreading disorder was an unwelcome warning of the possibility of violence for leaders organizing the 2012 Summer Olympics in less than a year.
Police called in hundreds of reinforcements — and made a rare decision to deploy armored vehicles in some of the worst-hit districts — but still struggled to keep pace with the chaos unfolding at flashpoints across London, in the central city of Birmingham, the western city of Bristol and the northwestern city of Liverpool.
Authorities acknowledged that major new bouts of violence had badly stretching their resources.
"The violence we have seen is simply inexcusable. Ordinary people have had their lives turned upside down by this mindless thuggery," police commander Christine Jones said.
The riots appeared to have little unifying cause — though some involved claimed to oppose sharp government spending cuts, which will slash welfare payments and cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs through 2015.
Others appeared attracted simply by the opportunity for violence. "Come join the fun," shouted one youth, racing along a street in the east London suburb of Hackney, where shops were attacked and cars torched.
The crisis will be a major test of Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government, which includes members who had long suspected its program of harsh budget restraints could provoke popular dissent. He reversed an earlier decision and cut short his summer vacation in Italy, rushing home for a meeting of the national crisis committee on Tuesday morning.
Cameron was expected to seek to toughen the response in meetings with ministers and police chiefs.
Rioters were left virtually unchallenged in several neighborhoods and able to plunder from stores at will or attempt to invade homes. Restaurants and stores fearful of looting closed early across London.
Disorder flared throughout the night, from gritty suburbs along the capital's fringes to central London's famously posh Notting Hill neighborhood. London's Ambulance Service said it had treated 16 patients, of whom 15 were hospitalized. Police said 334 people had been arrested and 69 people charged with offenses.
Three people were arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of a police officer left hospitalized after he was struck by a car in north London in the early hours of Tuesday.
After dawn, police said, the unrest appeared to calm, either quelled by police or after rioters drifted away.
Violence first broke out late Saturday in the low-income, multiethnic district of Tottenham in north London, where outraged protesters demonstrated against the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in disputed circumstances Thursday.
A brief inquest hearing into Duggan's death will take Tuesday, though it will likely be several months before a full hearing is convened.
Duggan's death stirred old animosities and racial tensions similar to those that prompted massive riots in the 1980s, despite efforts by London police to build better relations with the city's ethnic communities after high-profile cases of racism in recent decades.
But, as the unrest spread, some pointed to rising social tensions in Britain as the government slashes 80 billion pounds ($130 billion) from public spending by 2015 to reduce the huge deficit, swollen after the country spent billions bailing out its foundering banks.
In the south London district of Croydon, police said a 26-year-old man was shot and seriously injured Monday but were unable to say immediately whether the incident was linked to rioting there.
A massive blaze ravaged a 100-year-old family run furniture store in Croydon and sent thick plumes of smoke into the air, forcing nearby homes to be evacuated. In the Clapham Junction area of south London, a mob stole masks from a party store to disguise their identities and then set the building on fire.
Sony Corp. said a major blaze had broken out at its distribution center near Enfield, north London, damaging stocks of DVDs and other products. So many fires were being fought in the capital that Thames Water, which supplies most of London, warned that some of its customers could see their water pressure drop.
Dozens of people attacked shops in Birmingham's main retail district, and clashed with police in Liverpool and Bristol. --
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