Riots Rage On In London For Third Straight Day

Swaths of London became scenes of lawless looting and raging fires Monday as the wave of civil unrest that has gripped this sprawling capital sharply escalated, including fresh riots close to the athletes’ village and shiny new stadiums built for the 2012 Olympic Games.

The images of violence — with hundreds of youths looting shops, setting businesses ablaze and clashing with police in at least a half-dozen neighborhoods – deeply shocked Londoners, dealing this legendary city an enormously damaging blow less than a year before the start of the Olympics.

Rioters attacked double decker buses and set alight a column of fire that engulfed a street side in south London. Most of a block in the southern neighborhood of Croydon raged in flames.

Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a vacation trip to Tuscany, urgently returning to London Monday night to chair an emergency cabinet meeting to handle the mounting crisis. The embattled Metropolitan Police called in reinforcements from police forces outside London to help cope.

“Nobody should go out on the streets unless they have business to do so,” Simon Hughes, a national lawmaker from an inner London neighborhood, told reporters.