LONDON: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday vowed "swift criminal sanctions" following an emergency meeting on the far-right riots that broke out across England last week over the murder of three children.
The prime minister met with ministers and police chiefs, including Scotland Yard boss Mark Rowley, to discuss how to quell the violence that first broke out in Southport, northwest England.
Over the weekend, several police officers were injured and scores of people were arrested as mobs throwing bricks and flares clashed with officers, burnt and looted shops, and smashed the windows of cars and homes.
As part of a "number of actions" to come out of Monday's meeting, the government will "ramp up criminal justice" to ensure that "sanctions are swift", Starmer told the media.
He also said a "standing army" of specially-trained police officers was ready to be deployed to support local forces where any further riots break out. "My focus is on making sure that we stop this disorder," he added.
Clashes erupted in Southport a day after three young girls were killed and five more children critically injured during a knife attack at a dance class.
False rumours initially spread on social media saying the attacker was an asylum seeker, but police said the suspect was a 17-year-old born in Wales, with UK media reporting he has Rwandan parents. Police have since arrested hundreds of people in towns and cities nationwide, with anti-immigration demonstrators and rioters facing off against police and counter-protestors.
The prime minister on Sunday warned rioters they would "regret" participating in England's worst disorder in 13 years, while his interior minister Yvette Cooper told the BBC on Monday that "there will be a reckoning".
Cooper also said that social media put a "rocket booster" under the violence, and Starmer stressed that "criminal law applies online as well as offline".
Police have blamed the violence on people associated with the English Defence League, an anti-Islam organisation founded 15 years ago whose supporters have been linked to football hooliganism.
Some of the worst scenes on Sunday broke out in Rotherham, northern England, where masked rioters smashed several windows at a hotel that has been used to house asylum seekers.
At least 12 officers were injured, including one who was knocked unconscious, as they battled around 500 protesters with "far-right and anti-immigration views", South Yorkshire Police's Lindsey Butterfield told media on Monday. There were also large scuffles in Bolton, northwest England, and Middlesbrough, northeast England, where mobs smashed windows of houses and cars, leading to 43 arrests. — AFP
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