Rioting in Birmingham over rape rumour

A police officer films a crate of petrol bombs in Hartington Road in the Perry Barr area of Birmingham yesterday after riots had erupted on Saturday. An uneasy calm hangs over the Birmingham neighbourhood where a night of rioting triggered by rumours that a teenager had been sexually assaulted left one man stabbed to death.. PHOTO: AFP

Some 20 people were injured, and several arrested, in Saturday's unrest in the low-income Lozells district of Britain's second city, which followed a public meeting to discuss the alleged sex attack, police said.

"It's all quiet at the moment," a West Midlands Police spokesman told AFP by telephone Sunday, adding that there was "a high visibility police presence" in the area to deter any fresh incidents.

In an echo of violence in the same district in 1985, mobs pelted police with bricks, stones and bottles, and smashed shop and car windows with baseball bats and sticks, witnesses said. At least one car was torched.

The injured included three who were stabbed, and two who were shot, including a police officer hit by a round from a BB gun. Police said the man who was fatally stabbed was black.