UK riots: day four aftermath live

• Serious disorder in Manchester and west Midlands • Murder inquiry launched in Birmingham after car hits three men • Calm night in London as police maintain control • Send us your footage of the riots • Upload photos to our Flickr group and see others’ pictures • Read our latest summary of events • Read our latest news story 8.21am: Our correspondent Paul Lewis and video journalist Mustafa Khalili have been in Gloucester overnight, and have just filed their report. It seems that the disorder has shocked Gloucester, a picturesque cathedral city near the Welsh border, and a place that you wouldn’t associate with this kind of trouble. Teenagers were still taking pictures of the smouldering debris on Gloucester’s Barton Road at 5am on Wednesday, wide-eyed in disbelief. None had thought that television pictures of riots in major cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool would spread to their quaint home town near the Welsh border . Looking dazed, Nathan Phillips, 17, described the moment he realised Gloucester would be next. “We were stood outside our friends house. A person with a balaclava came out, and then he walked away. He came back with his friends, and they had hoods pulled tight over their heads. Then they chucked three bricks at the police car.” The officer inside, he said, was struck by one brick. “He just turned on the engine and sped off.” What followed, according to witnesses still around to relay events as dawn broke, was a series of running battles with the police along Gloucester’s narrow terraced streets. Riot police were drafted in alongside officers on horseback as they tried to quell the violence. The disorder in Gloucester, which began around 9.30pm on Tuesday, and continued into the early hours of the morning, was smaller in scale than the widespread looting and running battles elsewhere in England. Witnesses said the crowd of rioters consisted of around fifty youths, from young teenagers to men in their twenties. Unlike far larger cities such as Nottingham, which appears to have seen hundreds of shops targeted overnight, In Gloucester there were attempts to break into less than a dozen local stores and glass-fronted betting shops. There was an unconfirmed report that a petshop was targeted. But the reaction through the night to the news to a blazing fire and rioting in Gloucester suggested that while smaller than elsewhere, the disturbance heralded something symbolic: evidence that the spreading violence could take hold in a cathedral city with a population of less than 150,000. As one policewoman said guarding the burned out shell of a derelict building set on fire on Brunswick Road: “It’s madness. No-one can understand it.” 8.15am: Casey Rain, a songwriter from Birmingham, has been live blogging the situation overnight on Tumblr. He has collected some pictures of the trouble in the city, and he also has a name for one of the men who died in what appears to have been hit-and-run incident in the city in the early hours. Thanks agin to Rob Stickler for pointing me to this. 8.05am: One commenter, Rob Stickler asks about Wolverhampton and points to a report by local paper, the Express and Star, which says shops in the town were attacked. Here’s an extract from the Express and Star’s report : Shopkeepers in Wolverhampton have been left counting the cost after yobs hit Queen Street, Dudley Street, Wulfruna Street, Princess Street and Market Street. Thousands of pounds of damage has been caused by the rioting, which started after youths congregated in Queen Square shortly after 4.30pm. Up to 300 youths gathered there as riot police formed blockades in an attempt to cut off nearby Dudley Street. A thunder flash was let off causing dozens to scatter and a man who appeared to be hurt was led away by police. But within minutes windows had been smashed at stores across the city centre, including the Job Centre in Queen Street and Burton’s menswear. The shutter at No 1 Pizza, in Market Street, was also torn, leaving shopkeepers unable to close the building. Large groups of people played cat and mouse with riot police, who kept them on the move. 7.58am: If you have any reliable information, eyewitness reports, pictures or video, or you want to point me to anything in particular, please email me – matt.wells@guardian.co.uk 7.37am: My colleague Sam Jones has been totallig up the number of arrests overnight. He makes it 479: with 81 in London, 108 in greater Manchester, 109 in the west Midlands, 90 in Nottingham, 13 in Leicester, 19 in Bristol, 9 in Gloucester, 35 on Merseyside and 15 in the Thames Valley force area. 7.33am: More on the disturbances in Nottingham , in case you missed them. Canning Circus police station was firebombed by a group of 30 to 40 men at around 10pm, as the community office was closing for the evening. At least eight people were arrested in connection with the incident, which did not result in any injuries. Meadows Police station was also attacked by a gang of between 15-20 males and a police car was set alight outside. Elsewhere in the city, A fire broke out Clarendon College in Sherwood Rise following a fire bomb attack. Groups of youths using masks and hoods to hide their identities congregated around parts of the city setting light to cars and attacking businesses, pubs and community centres. Leicestershire police said officers had arrested 13 people following disturbances in Leicester city centre. 7.24am: There has been a second night of violence in Liverpool . The Press Association reports that around 200 youths gathered to the south of the city as they roamed from Toxteth to Wavertree causing disorder and damage Trouble also spread to Birkenhead with reports of up to 100 youths wrecking vehicles in the Park Road South area. Merseyside Police have now arrested 50 people since Monday night for incidents of disorder in Liverpool and the Wirral. A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said the number of arrests for disorder in Manchester city centre and Salford had risen to 108. Police in Gloucester have arrested nine men. 7.19am: West Midlands ambulance service has been giving more details of the incident that led to the deaths of three men. Crews of paramedics found around 80 people at the scene of the incident, close to the Jet filling station on Dudley Road in Winson Green. Two of the men were pronounced dead soon after arriving at hospital, while a third died later. 7.11am: A third victim of the collision in Winson Green, Birmingham , has died in hospital. Two other men died at the scene when they were hit by a car. A spokesman for the ambulance service said the man had received treatment at City Hospital for several hours before dying from his “significant” injuries. 7.00am: Good morning and welcome to our coverage of the aftermath of another night of disorder around the UK. You can read our overnight coverage here . Here is a summary of events so far. • There has been serious disorder in a number of towns and cities across England, including Manchester, Birmingham, West Bromwich, Gloucester and Birmingham. A police station in Nottingham was as violence also hit Liverpool, Leicester, Bristol, Leeds and Gloucester. Garry Shewan, assistant chief constable of Greater Manchester police, said: “This has been senseless on a scale I have never witnessed before in my career.” •  West Midlands police have launched a murder inquiry after a car hit three men on Dudley Road in Birmingham, killing two of them. The men are believed to have been protecting their neighbourhood, although it remains unclear if the collision was related to the disturbances in other parts of the city. • London has been relatively calm overnight, with the 16,000 police officers deployed in the capital succeeding in maintaining order. There were a number of minor clashes as groups of vigilantes sought to maintain order. In Enflield, there was a racial undertone to the scenes as a large group of men roamed the area, chanting “England, England”. • Scotland Yard ssays 768 arrests have been made in connection with violence, disorder and looting in London in recent days. By midnight, police in Manchester had arrested 47 people. • The Independent Police Complaints Commission has announced there is no evidence that Mark Duggan, whose death in a police shoot-out led to the London riots, fired on police before he was killed. However, a loaded handgun was recovered from the scene. This is all consistent with the account of the officers on the scene, who never claimed Duggan fired first. The officer who fired the shot is believed to have acted because he feared for his life. Police Crime UK riots Manchester Birmingham Bristol Liverpool Matt Wells guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 10, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.