London - More than 20 people were hurt and 17 arrested during a race riot that turned into an ugly standoff with hundreds of police in north-west England overnight, British police said on Sunday.
Police fought running battles with up to 500 stone and petrol bomb-throwing youths in the streets of Oldham, near Manchester after Saturday night clashes between rival white and Asian groups escalated into a riot in which cars were set on fire, pubs firebombed and gunshots reported.
"They threw quite a lot of petrol bombs," Manchester police Superintendent Eric Hewitt told reporters as dawn broke over the rubble-strewn streets and the crowd dispersed. "I am very angry. We could have had someone killed".
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He said police were at a loss to explain the sudden eruption of violence, although he accepted that racial tensions had been building for some time.
"We have seen tensions building here for many months, but not on the scale we saw last night. No one can provide an explanation for this at the moment. We will be looking to rebuild confidence in the community."
Hewitt praised his officers for their bravery and said many more arrests were expected in coming days.
He rejected suggestions that tensions in the town had turned some places into no-go areas for his officers, but said police would maintain a high presence throughout the bank holiday weekend.
Twenty police officers and several civilians suffered minor injuries and a number of police cars were very badly damaged.
"There are fires burning in the streets, there is rubble all over the road and the air's full of smoke," a police spokesperson said earlier after hundreds of riot police from around Greater Manchester were drafted in to quell the fighting.
A Reuters photographer was attacked and his equipment smashed during the height of the rioting, which came just 10 days before a general election that has featured rising crime as a prominent theme.
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