'Mob Rule' as London Rioting Spreads

The arson and pillaging that's terrorized working-class London since Saturday has spread into eight more city districts and at least three other cities in the U.K., marking the worst outbreak of civil unrest in that country in a quarter-century. Here are the latest updates:

"Disturbances" have been reported in Birmingham, Liverpool and Bristol. Manchester police deny rumors of trouble.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson are both "scrambling" to return from their vacations abroad.
An increase of 1,700 police officers has proven powerless against the rioters. Districts such as Clapham, Hackney, Dalston, Peckham, Woolwich and Lewisham have all but surrendered to "mob rule." Local businesses have been cleaned out from the "orgy of looting" that's unfolded all day and through the night.
Over 330 arrests so far, the youngest an 11-year-old boy.
An "enormous fire" has engulfed a large Sony distribution warehouse in the already-ravaged Enfield section of London. According to a witness: "We heard a smash at the Sony centre and I went outside to have a look. It was youths just looting and taking loads of products like Wii consoles and stuff like that. They had petrol bombs in bottles. As I went back to work to tell everyone what's going on, about five minutes after that the whole Sony centre was ablaze."

In this video, which is quickly going viral, an injured boy is helped up by some looters, one of whom them unzips his bag and helps himself to its contents.

Photos of burned-out cars and smashed double-decker buses in the Ealing neighborhood, hit hard Monday night by looters, are proliferating on Twitter.
A chilling photo of a double-decker bus engulfed in flames looks like some long-lost Pink Floyd album cover.
Another sure-to-become-iconic image of the silhouette of a woman leaping into firefighters' arms in front of a wall of flames. This is in Croydon, where a historic building has been destroyed by fire.
Unconfirmed reports of a man being shot in the face in Leeds.
Two priests "entered the Pembury Road housing project in Hackney, the scene of some of the worst violence, to gain permission from rioters to allow an ambulance to take an injured elderly woman to safety."

[Photo via Getty]