London rocked by violence for third straight night

Reuters/London

A car burns on a street in Hackney, east London, yesterday

Youths hurled missiles at police in northeast London yesterday as violence broke out in the capital for a third night.Protesters threw bottles, rubbish bins and supermarket trolleys at officers, and police with riot shields responded by charging them as they tried to seal off a busy area around Hackney Central station.There were social media reports of disturbances in several other areas of London.Crowds of people, many wearing hooded tops, broke into a truck and pulled out planks of wood for use as missiles, a Reuters reporter on the scene said. Some of the youths broke shop windows, including that of a Ladbrokes betting shop. The BBC said the clashes broke out after police stopped and searched a man. London has been hit by two nights of violence which erupted on Saturday night in Tottenham, north London, after a protest over the fatal shooting of a man by armed police turned violent. Government officials branded rioters who fought police, looted shops and set fire to buildings at the weekend as opportunistic criminals and said the violence, the worst in London for years, would not affect preparations for next summer’s Olympic Games.Home Secretary Theresa May, who cut short her holiday to take charge of the government response to the riots, said arrests had climbed to 215 and 27 people had been charged. “Let’s be absolutely clear, there is no excuse for violence, there is no excuse for looting, there is no excuse for thuggery,” she said. Police deputy assistant commissioner Steve Kavanagh said the force was putting more officers on the streets in Hackney and other areas.“What we can see is the Metropolitan Police is getting police officers there in numbers, when we have large numbers of criminals intent on that kind of violence,” he told the BBC.A small group of people had barricaded themselves inside the 110-year-old Hackney Empire theatre where past performers have included Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.“We are stuck inside,” said one person, who did not give her name, in a telephone conversation with Reuters. “We don’t want to be near the windows. They seem to be targeting shops at the moment. It’s very scary.“We are in the back of the building, staying away from the front. We have barricaded the doors, and put chains on the doors.” Twitter users sent messages and pictures of a police buildup in the south London districts of Peckham and Lewisham, with Sky news reporting there had already been fresh confrontations between youths and the police.The weekend of mayhem started in the multi-ethnic, lower-income neighbourhood of Tottenham, only a few miles from the Olympic park that will welcome millions of visitors in less than a year. London Mayor Boris Johnson, who was also reported to be cutting short his holiday, said he hoped the city would “have a fantastic Olympics no matter what happened last night”.