London riots: Streets quiet after days of rioting and looting

Britain's cities were largely quiet early today after days of rioting and looting that drew thousands of extra police officers onto the streets and a stern warning from Prime Minister David Cameron that order would be restored by whatever means necessary.

Tensions remained high even in the absence of any major incidents, and Cameron has recalled Parliament from its summer recess for an emergency debate on the riots today. He will face mounting pressure to reconsider planned police budget cuts, which critics say will strain an already overstretched force.

An eerie calm prevailed over most of London overnight, with a highly visible police presence watching over the capital.

Other cities where looters had caused damage this week also came through the night largely unscathed, though for the first time minor disturbances were reported in Wales.

Police continued to make arrests linked to the disturbances, with the number of arrests in London alone climbing to 820. Courts were staffing around the clock to process alleged looters, vandals and thieves - including one as young as 11.

Even as Cameron promised not to let a "culture of fear" take hold, tensions flared in Birmingham, where a murder probe was opened after three men were killed in a hit-and-run drive as they took to the streets to defend shops from looting.

"We needed a fight back, and a fight back is under way," Cameron said in a somber televised statement outside his Downing Street office after a meeting of the nation's crisis committee. As if to indicate his resolve, he underlined "nothing is off the table" - including water cannon, commonly used in Northern Ireland but never deployed in Britain.

Outside the capital, in England's second-largest city of Birmingham, police began a murder investigation into the deaths of three men hit by a car. Residents said the dead men, ages 21 to 31, were members of Birmingham's South Asian communities who had been patrolling their neighborhood to keep it safe from looters.

"They lost their lives for other people, doing the job of the police," said witness Mohammed Shakiel, 34. "They weren't standing outside a mosque, a temple, a synagogue or a church - they were standing outside shops where everybody goes. They were protecting the community."

The violence has revived debate about the Conservative-led government's austerity measures, which will slash $130 billion from public spending by 2015 to reduce the country's swollen budget deficit.

Cameron's government has slashed police budgets as part of the cuts. London Mayor Boris Johnson - like Cameron, a Conservative - broke with the government to say such cuts are wrong.

"That case was always pretty frail, and it has been substantially weakened," he told BBC radio. "This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers."

Britain's riots began Saturday when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting in London's Tottenham neighborhood turned violent.

tags: london riots, riots