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Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Violence In London









Riot police faced off with youths in London on Monday, television pictures showed, in the third day of disorder after some of the worst rioting in the British capital in years took place at the weekend.
Scores of young people gathered in a main street in the inner-city district of Hackney, smashing up buildings and breaking into a truck that became stranded in the middle of the road, pulling out its contents, the pictures showed.
It began when police tried to carry out a stop and search operation, the BBC said, but a police spokesman could not immediately confirm the report.
Riots broke out in the north London district of Tottenham on Saturday night, following a protest against the death of a local man in a police shooting last week, and the violence spread to other parts of the city on Sunday.
Police said Monday they had arrested 100 people in a second night of rioting in London, condemning it as "copycat" disorder following weekend unrest sparked by the death of a man in a police shooting.
As violence which rocked the multi-ethnic northern district of Tottenham on Saturday spread to other districts of the capital, doubts emerged over the original version the shooting of 29-year-old Mark Duggan, with suggestions that officers were not under attack when they opened fire.
Nine police officers were injured Sunday as youths attacked shops, cars and threw missiles at police in the southern district of Brixton, in Enfield, Walthamstow and Islington in the north, and on Oxford Street in the city centre.
Police had braced themselves for "copycat criminal activity" following rioting in Tottenham on Saturday night, after several hundred people held a peaceful protest against Duggan's death.
Homes were torched, two police cars and a double-decker bus were set ablaze and shops looted in Tottenham in the worst such unrest in London for years, less than 12 months before the city hosts the Olympic Games.
At least nine police officers were injured overnight Sunday, including three who were taken to hospital after being hit by a speeding car, after 26 were hurt on Saturday. "Officers responding to sporadic disorder in a number of boroughs made more than 100 arrests throughout last night and early this morning," Scotland Yard said on Monday, after 61 people were arrested on Saturday night. "Officers are shocked at the outrageous level of violence directed against them," a police spokesman said.
Police deployed extra officers in flashpoint areas on Sunday night, but there was still widespread looting, with young men seen walking out of ransacked stores laden with electrical goods.


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