Fresh clashes after UK race riot

Rioters firebombed vehicles and pubs

OLDHAM, England -- Police say calm has been restored to the northern English town of Oldham after another night of unrest.

The clashes follow an outbreak of racial violence on Saturday that left at least 20 people injured.

With 10 days to go before the UK general election, the violence has entered the political arena as the main party leaders urged tolerance and just treatment of all citizens.

The government advised politicians to avoid remarks that might inflame racial tensions.

Overnight on Sunday a local newspaper office in the manufacturing town near Manchester was set on fire and riot police smashed through blazing barricades of tyres to disperse youths.

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"We managed to contain the situation using zero tolerance and a massive presence. Also, the rain we have all been praying for has just arrived," a police spokeswoman told Reuters news agency.

White and Asian youths rioted on Saturday night, throwing petrol bombs and stones at pubs and vehicles after a gang of white youths threw bricks at a house belonging to a Bangladeshi family, police said.

At least 20 people were injured, including 15 police, during the weekend violence, and 37 were arrested.

The racial violence in Oldham was the worst to hit Britain since a white supremacist's nail bomb attacks in London two years ago.

"It's Asians and whites involved in the troubles generally," the police spokeswoman said.

At the height of the violence -- on Saturday night and early Sunday morning -- about 500 youths hurled bricks and petrol bombs at hundreds of police who were called in from Manchester, miles away.

Cars were set on fire, at least five pubs were firebombed and several police cars were badly damaged.

Riot police on patrol

Manchester police Superintendent Eric Hewitt told reporters: "They threw quite a lot of petrol bombs. I am very angry. We could have had someone killed."

Home Minister Jack Straw said Saturday's violence was "initially set off by whites and later, more seriously, involved Asians."

"It is the first time I have ever seen anything like this and I have been living in Oldham for more than 30 years," Khurshid Ahmed, secretary of the Pakistan Cultural Association, told Associated Press.

"People have always been living in Oldham in harmony."

Paul Barrow, landlord of the Live and Let Live Pub, told Reuters he was "shell-shocked" by the violence.

"This is total devastation," he said of the burnt curtains and smashed windows at his pub.

Police have increased their presence in Oldham in recent weeks after a series of visits from members of the National Front, a small but vocal right-wing extremist group that opposes the presence in Britain of Jews and blacks.

Oldham hit the headlines in Britain earlier this year when national newspapers printed pictures of the battered face of a 76-year-old white man who said he had been attacked by a gang of Asian youths.

A 15-year-old Asian boy was later charged with racially motivated assault.

Earlier this month, Straw banned political marches in the Oldham, but on May 5 the National Front held a march in breach of the ban.