London's third days of Riots

 Tuesday, August 09, 2011- LONDON: A man who was shot in a car during riots in London died in hospital Tuesday from his injuries, police said, becoming the first fatal casualty from three days of unrest in the British capital.The 26-year- man was found with gunshot wounds late Monday in Croydon, a south London suburb where several buildings were burned down during the riots, the Metropolitan Police said.
A Scotland Yard official says 525 people have now been arrested in London after three days of "unprecedented" rioting.Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stephen Kavanagh says London police have been stretched to an extent never seen before and apologized that residents had to wake up to yet more scenes of destruction. He spoke Tuesday.
Prime Minister David Cameron recalled parliament and ordered thousands of extra police onto the streets after Britain's worst rioting in decades left parts of London and other cities in flames.
Cameron cutting short his holiday in Italy return to Britain for an emergency meeting on the riots. Cameron said,Government "do everything necessary to restore order to the streets, and to make them safe" for law-abiding people.Addressing the mainly young men responsible for the "sickening scenes" of looting and arson, he said: "You will feel the full force of the law. And if you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishments."

Riots swept through London,other cities overnight Monday, this is third consecutive night of violence which began in the north London district of Tottenham on Saturday after the shooting of a local man by police.Scotland Yard said the rampage by hundreds of vagabonds overnight was the worst in living memory in London, and one police officer, Paul Deller, admitted Tuesday: "We simply ran out of units to send."

This unrest is  worst since the 1980s and has raised questions about security in London ahead of the Olympic Games which take place in the east of the capital in a year's time.Rioters took control of the streets with little sign of a police presence  in Clapham, a predominantly affluent area of southwest London, hundreds looted a department store for at least two hours, witnesses said.Cameron said that all police leave had been cancelled and there would be 16,000 officers on the streets of London on Tuesday night, compared to the 6,000 deployed on Monday evening.More than 450 people have been arrested in London in the last three days, too many to hold in the city's police station jails.Acting Police Commissioner Tim Godwin said there were "no plans" for the army to get involved.Speaker of the House of Commons agrees to recall parliament on Thursday so lawmakers could debate their response to the riots, Cameron said  a highly unusual move highlighting the seriousness of the crisis.In a sign of the fallout from the riots, the Football Association cancelled Wednesday's friendly between England and the Netherlands at Wembley Stadium in north London because of the violence.

Riots broke on Saturday night in the ethnically-mixed north London district of Tottenham, following a protest against the death of a local man, Mark Duggan, in a police shooting two days earlier.An inquest into the 29-year-old's death opened on Tuesday, and heard that he died of a single gunshot wound to the chest.Duggan, a father of four, was shot after the taxi he was travelling was stopped by police during an operation against gun crime in the black community.

Copycat riots broke out in other flashpoints areas on Sunday, and by Monday night they had spread across the city, from the wealthy districts of Notting Hill and Clapham, inner-city Peckham and Hackney, and suburban Croydon and Ealing.

The violence was often directed at police officers, including in Brent, northwest London, where three people were arrested for attempted murder after an officer was hit by a car. He was hospitalised, but was in a stable condition.Some 44 police officers were injured overnight Monday, in addition to at least 35 who were hurt on the previous two evenings, police said.The violence also spread outside London on Monday night, including to Liverpool, where hundreds of rioters rampaged through the streets of the northwest city for several hours, setting cars and dustbins alight.

Police in Birmingham, in central England, said they had made 100 arrests as youths ran riot and looted shops in the city centre overnight, while police in the western city of Bristol battled to contain a mob of 150 youths.

The worst destruction was in Croydon, a suburb of south London, where an entire block of buildings  including a 100-year-old family furniture business -- was burned down, sending flames leaping into the night sky.Media-agencies