British police arrest 138 as riots spread to Birmingham

(Update III)

BIRMINGHAM, United Kingdom, Aug 9: British police said Tuesday they had arrested 138 people in Birmingham after a night of rioting as violence spread from London to elsewhere in the country.

At least 30 shops and other premises were attacked in Birmingham, Britain´s second biggest city with around one million residents, overnight Monday.[break]

Up to 800 masked rioters smashed and looted shops in the city´s main shopping centre and a police station was also set on fire in an inner city area, West Midlands police said.

About 400 police in riot gear were deployed to deal with the disturbances, with more officers supporting them.

"Last night was a really terrible night for the country and a very bad night for Birmingham," said Chief Constable Chris Sims, head of West Midlands police.

"And let me say this; this was not an angry crowd, this was a greedy crowd. What we were dealing with was dishonesty and disorder."

He added many of those arrested were "astonishingly young."

"They are teenagers, girls and boys, and I would appeal to their parents and to the wider community to make sure that they don´t go off tonight on to the streets but stay indoors where they are safe."

Man dies after being shot in car during London riots: police

A man who was shot in a car during riots in London died in hospital Tuesday from his injuries, police said, becoming the first fatality from three days of unrest in the British capital.

The 26-year-old man was found with gunshot wounds late Monday in Croydon, a south London suburb where several buildings were burned down during the riots, London´s Metropolitan Police said.[break]

Police have launched a murder investigation.

The wave of riots across London and in some other English cities was triggered by another shooting last week -- although on that occasion it was by police.

Mark Duggan, 29, was killed by armed officers on Thursday in Tottenham, north London, after they stopped the taxi he was in during an attempted arrest as part of a police operation against gun crime within the black community.

A probe into Duggan´s death heard on Tuesday that he was killed by a single gunshot wound to the chest.

London communities begin riot clean-up

Londoners began cleaning up their city after a third night of riots on Tuesday, aided by a Twitter and Facebook campaign which rallied people to the most damaged areas.

Fires broke out across the capital on Monday night as looters smashed up and set ablaze buildings, shops and cars, while violence also broke out in the cities of Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol.[break]

In Peckham in southeast London, about 20 members of the community arrived on the high street on Tuesday morning armed with dustpans and brushes to offer small businesses help in cleaning up their shops which had been smashed in.

"I was devastated when I saw what happened last night. I was really angry so I thought I´d channel my anger in a constructive way," said one woman in her 20s.

"We have never met each other before, we just spoke on Twitter this morning. Twitter can be used for good."

An online campaign, Clean Up London, (@Riotcleanup) had 27,500 followers on Twitter by mid-morning on Tuesday, as it instructed people to congregate to remove the glass and bricks strewn across the streets of the city.

"Moving from Lewisham towards Catford now as Lewisham seems to be pretty cleaned up by now," said one post, referring to areas in southeast London, while another added: "Hackney is clean too. This city is resilient."

Similar messages were sent out about Liverpool, calling for help to clean-up a "bombed out church" in the northwestern city.

The Association of British Insurers estimated the damage caused by the riots across Britain as "tens of millions of pounds".

Flames, rioting engulf London for third day

Violence escalated across London and at least three other cities Tuesday as police fought thousands of rioters and looters and Prime Minister David Cameron headed back to Britain to face the crisis.

In unprecedented scenes of rioting in the capital, buildings were in flames in Croydon, Peckham and Lewisham in the city´s south, while gangs of looters roamed the streets of Hackney in the east, Clapham in the south, Camden in the north and Ealing in the west.[break]

Scotland Yard said it had deployed an extra 1,700 officers to deal with the London unrest, the worst in years. Armoured cars were used to quell the rioters.

Hundreds of riot police poured into Hackney to try to contain the violence in a district just a few miles (kilometres) from where the 2012 Olympics will take place in a year´s time.

As darkness fell, police wielding batons pushed the youths back, while local residents hoping to return to their homes were kept behind police cordons.

In Croydon, an entire block of buildings -- including a 100-year-old family furniture business -- was ablaze, sending flames leaping into the night sky.

Local residents were evacuated due to the spreading fire, while the Guardian newspaper quoted a nearby officer as admitting: "We can´t cope. We have passed breaking point."

A 26-year-old man was found injured in a car with gunshot wounds in Croydon, police said. He was taken to hospital and was in a serious condition.

Just outside Croydon town centre, hordes of looters roamed the streets unchallenged while the smell of burning cars and buildings hung in the air, an AFP correspondent said.

Firefighters also battled a severe blaze in Clapham after looters rifled their way through the renowned Debenhams department store.

Wealthy neighbourhoods were not spared with rampagers forcing their way into Michelin-starred restaurant The Ledbury in Notting Hill before stealing diners´ phones, plates off the tables and attempting to take the till.

The violence first erupted on Saturday in the multi-ethnic neighbourhood of Tottenham in north London after a man was shot dead by police two days earlier.

Copycat violence then spread to other areas of the British capital on Sunday before reaching to new districts on Monday.

Rioting also broke out in the English cities of Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol.

West Midlands Police confirmed they had made 87 arrests as youths ran rampage in Birmingham centre overnight, smashing shop windows and looting merchandise.

Meanwhile, Merseyside Police confirmed Tuesday they were dealing with disorder in the north west city of Liverpool with several cars set alight while Bristol officers battled to contain a mob of around 150 youths.

Prime Minister Cameron, who had resisted calls to cut short his family holiday in Italy amid last week´s turmoil on the financial markets, was due to return to Britain Tuesday, his Downing Street office said.

He will chair a meeting of Britain´s emergency response committee and hold separate talks with the Home Secretary Theresa May and the acting London police chief.

Police said Tuesday they had made 334 arrests over the three days, including an 11-year-old boy. At least 35 police officers were injured in the unrest at the weekend. Sixty-nine people were charged.

Acting Metropolitan Police Commissioner Tim Godwin earlier urged parents to "start contacting their children" to find out where they were before slamming "spectators getting in the way of the police operations."

Tensions remained high in Tottenham following the shooting on Thursday of 29-year-old Mark Duggan, which sparked the first riots in London.

There were fresh doubts about the original account of his death during a police operation against gun crime within the black community.

The father-of-four was shot in a taxi in what was initially said to have been an exchange of gunfire. But reports said it was possible that police officers were not under attack when they opened fire.

Tottenham was the scene of severe rioting on the Broadwater Farm housing estate in 1985 when police constable Keith Blakelock was hacked to death.

After Duggan´s death, rumours spread online that he had been killed in an assassination-style execution with shots to the head -- something the Independent Police Complaints Commission was forced to deny in a statement.