Disorder spreads northward to Manchester as London picks up pieces reported, capital, country, several, across

peter236

CBC News
Posted: Aug 9, 2011 2:11 PM ET
Last Updated: Aug 9, 2011 3:34 PM ET

More than 16,000 police are fanning out across London Tuesday night amid fears that widespread rioting in the British capital and other cities would resume for a fourth straight night.

Police in Manchester reported disorder in the city centre and the neighbourhood of Salford, while the BBC reported damage to several shops in West Bromwich in the country's West Midlands.

Witnesses at Manchester's main shopping area of Market Street reported plumes of thick smoke filling the air after looters set fire to a Miss Selfridge store. Transport officials also suspended service on the Metrolink tram that runs through the city centre.

Earlier in the day, residents of London's affected areas banded together Tuesday to clean up the aftermath of looting in their communities. British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to do everything necessary to restore order and punish those responsible for the violence.

Cameron cut short his holidays to return to London to address the worst rioting in the country in decades, warning that the culprits "will feel the full force of the law."

Many residents of the communities hit by violence have complained that police responded too slowly or in too few numbers to quell the troubles in previous nights.

Many stores and shopping centres in cities across the country closed early as a precaution, according to reports.

At least one death is being blamed on the riots, with officials confirming a 26-year-old man shot in a car in the London suburb of Croydon during Monday night's violence has died in hospital.

In London's Hackney district, hundreds of youths left a trail of burning trash and shattered glass. Looters ransacked a small convenience store, filling plastic shopping bags with alcohol, cigarettes, candy and toilet paper.

"This is the uprising of the working class. We're redistributing the wealth," said Bryn Phillips, 28, a self-described anarchist, as young people emerged from the store with chocolate bars and ice cream cones.
Tensions over police shooting



A chaotic 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. A chaotic 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. Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

Police said 560 people had been arrested and 105 people charged over three nights of rioting that began late Saturday in London's northern Tottenham district when a peaceful protest over the police shooting of a local man turned violent, leaving parts of the street charred and its shops looted.

Also on Tuesday, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, a watchdog agency investigating last Thursday's shooting of Mark Duggan, 29, announced there was no evidence he fired at police. An illegal firearm recovered at the scene had not been fired, the watchdog said.

The shooting of Duggan, a black man, in a neighbourhood with a history of tensions between police and young people triggered immediate outrage in the community over police abuses and demands for independent inquiries into the officers' actions.
MAP Riot hotspots in London

Police said Duggan was shot dead last week when police from Operation Trident, the unit that investigates gun crime in the black community, stopped a cab he was riding in.

The IPCC said police involved in the shooting insisted there was a threat of life in the confrontation that led to Duggan being fatally shot.

Some have blamed the unrest on unemployment, insensitive policing and frustration across Britain over the government's austerity budget, which will bring deep cuts to social services and welfare payments.
With files from The Associated Press
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