Police Out in Force in Racially Split City

Hundreds of police patrolled the streets of this troubled city in northern England on Sunday night as community leaders wrestled with a widening racial rift.

Patrol cars monitored main streets, a police helicopter buzzed overhead and dozens of paddy wagons packed with officers clad in riot gear were parked in and around the city center.

Despite the heavy security, a gang of white youths smashed the windows of an Indian restaurant and an Asian-owned gas station in a predominantly white community on the outskirts of Bradford.

“A group of around 30 white youths just came and started throwing bricks through the windows. They smashed them all,” Kababeesh restaurant manager Tayab Amjad said. “I think it was some sort of stupid retaliation for the trouble we had yesterday.”

About 120 police officers were injured Saturday night by mobs of white and South Asian youths armed with bats, rocks and firebombs. Several buildings were torched and looted.

Police arrested 36 people; 27 of them remained in custody Sunday.

By early this morning, the city was quiet, police said.

Bradford is the fourth northern city to be racked by violence involving whites and people of South Asian descent in recent weeks. The troubles have been blamed largely on agitation by right-wing groups.

The riots in Bradford erupted Saturday after the Anti-Nazi League staged a demonstration against the far-right anti-immigrant National Front, which planned to parade in the city despite a government ban.

At the height of the violence, a crowd of several hundred youths erected burning barricades and set cars on fire and showered police with bricks, bottles, gasoline bombs and fireworks.

West Yorkshire police said some officers were attacked with bats and hammers. Nineteen civilians were treated at hospitals for a range of injuries including stab wounds, head injuries and bruises.

Police said 13 whites and 23 Asians were arrested.

Witnesses said the violence apparently started when a group of white men came out of a pub and shouted racial epithets at a crowd of several hundred mostly Asian youths gathered for the rally organized by the Anti-Nazi League.

Almost one in five people in Bradford--a city of 500,000--is from Asia or has roots there, mostly in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.