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A wave of violence and looting raged across London and spread to three other major British cities on Tuesday, as authorities struggled to contain the country’s worst unrest since race riots set the capital ablaze in the 1980s.

In London, groups of young people rampaged for a third straight night, setting buildings, vehicles and garbage dumps alight, looting stores and pelting police officers with bottles and fireworks. The spreading disorder was an unwelcome warning of the possibility of violence for leaders organizing the 2012 Summer Olympics in less than a year.

Neighborhoods across the capital faced a massive clean-up of smashed glass, bricks, bottles and gutted buildings as police reinforcements reclaimed the streets from the youths.

On Monday, police made a rare decision to deploy armored vehicles in some of the worst-hit districts. However, authorities still struggled to keep pace with the chaos unfolding at flashpoints across London, in the central city of Birmingham — where a police station was set ablaze — the western city of Bristol and the northwestern city of Liverpool.

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Citing “sickening scenes,” British prime minister David Cameron announced that 16,000 police officers would be deployed on London’s streets on Tuesday — up from 6,000 on Monday night.

Cameron, who cut short his summer vacation in Italy and recalled Parliament from its summer recess to deal with the crisis, also promised “even more robust police action.”

“This is criminality pure and simple and it needs to be confronted,” he added. “Justice will be done and these people will see the consequences of their actions. If you are old enough to commit these crimes, you are old enough to face the punishment.”

Authorities acknowledged that major new bouts of violence had badly stretched their resources.

“The violence we have seen is simply inexcusable,” police Commander Christine Jones said. “Ordinary people have had their lives turned upside down by this mindless thuggery.”

The riots appeared to have little unifying cause — though some involved claimed to oppose sharp government spending cuts, which will slash welfare payments and cut tens of thousands of public sector jobs through 2015.

Others appeared attracted simply by the opportunity for violence. “Come join the fun,” shouted one youth, racing along a street in the east London suburb of Hackney, where shops were attacked and cars torched.

Rioters were left virtually unchallenged in several neighborhoods and able to plunder from stores at will or attempt to invade homes. Restaurants and stores fearful of looting closed early across London.

Witnesses were told of numerous cases of car theft by groups of looters.

Disorder flared throughout the night, from gritty suburbs along the capital’s fringes to central London’s famously ritzy Notting Hill neighborhood. London’s Ambulance Service said it had treated 16 patients, of whom 15 were hospitalized.

Police said 525 people had been arrested and more than 100 people charged with offenses. Sky News reported that London’s jail cells were full so suspects were being taken to police stations outside of the capital.

At one point, the London fire brigade said it was running out of vehicles to tackle fires started by the rioters.

Three people were arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of a police officer left hospitalized after he was struck by a car in north London early Tuesday.

A 26-year-old man who was shot in his car during disturbances overnight in Croydon, south of London, died in a hospital early Tuesday, becoming the first fatality of the riots sweeping Britain, the BBC reported.

After dawn, police said, the unrest appeared to calm, either quelled by police or after rioters drifted away.

Violence first broke out late Saturday in the low-income, multiethnic district of Tottenham in north London, where outraged protesters demonstrated against the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was gunned down in disputed circumstances Thursday.

A brief inquest hearing into Duggan’s death will take Tuesday, though it will likely be several months before a full hearing is convened.

Duggan’s death stirred old animosities and racial tensions similar to those that prompted massive riots in the 1980s, despite efforts by London police to build better relations with the city’s ethnic communities after high-profile cases of racism in recent decades.

But, as the unrest spread, some pointed to rising social tensions in Britain as the government slashes 80 billion pounds ($130 billion) from public spending by 2015 to reduce the huge deficit, swollen after the country spent billions bailing out its foundering banks.

In the south London district of Croydon, police said a 26-year-old man was shot and seriously injured Monday but were unable to say immediately whether the incident was linked to rioting there.

READ MORE: MSNBC

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