Race riots escalate in Sydney

YOUNG people riding in vehicles smashed cars and store windows in suburban Sydney late yesterday, a day after thousands of drunken white youths attacked people they believed were of Middle Eastern descent at a beach in the same area in one of Australia’s worst outbursts of racial violence.

Sunday’s attack - prompted by reports that Lebanese youths had assaulted two lifeguards - sparked retaliation by young men of Arab descent, fighting with police and smashing 40 cars with sticks and bats, police said. Thirty-one people were injured and 16 arrested in hours of violence.

The rampage yesterday broke out in Cronulla, the same coastal suburb where the violence began, and in neighbouring Carringbah.