After three days of violent disturbances during London riots, the city finally returned to normal, although new riots were reported in Manchester and Birmingham, where three police officers were run over by a car.

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.

Violence in Manchester most ever in 30 years

In Manchester, the country’s third-largest city, police described the actions as the most violent in the last 30 years.

Nearly 1,000 police intervened in 800 actions reported in downtown Manchester, where more than 100 people were arrested on suspicion of causing damage, according to official sources.

In Birmingham, police were investigating the deaths of three Asian men. 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.

Birmingham Riots : 3 men killed while protecting other people

“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.”

More than 1,000 people were arrested nationwide since the protests began on Saturday in the neighborhood of Tottenham after Mark Duggan, 29, was shot dead by the police.

British PM David Cameron : Solution to be find in the Parliament meeting

British Prime Minister David Cameron said police were prepared to use water bombs to stop demonstrators if necessary.

Cameron confirmed a special meeting of the Parliament scheduled for Thursday to find a solution to the current crisis.

Other cities where looters had caused damage earlier  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 riots and 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 looters.

Cameron : Water Cannon against rioters never off the table

“We needed a fight back, and a fight back is under way,” Cameron stated 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, hestressed “nothing is off the table” – including water cannon, commonly used in Northern Ireland but never deployed in Britain.

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

PM 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 state such cuts are wrong.

“That case was always frail, and it has been substantially weakened now,” he statede at BBC radio. “This is not a time to consider about making substantial cuts in police force numbers.”

Britain’s riots began Saturday when an initially peaceful protest over a police shooting of an man, father of four, in London’s Tottenham neighborhood turned violent.

 

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