Early on Friday, police told Swedish news agency TT that eight people had been arrested so far for the night’s rioting, but no injuries were reported.

Police said on Thursday they would be calling in reinforcements from other parts of the country as they prepared for more trouble.

The riots have sparked a debate in Sweden about the assimilation of immigrants, who make up about 15 percent of the population.

In Rinkeby, one of the city’s immigrant-dominated areas, firefighters rushed late on Thursday to put out flames that engulfed six cars parked alongside each other.

Three more cars were torched in the Norsborg suburb, and a police station in Aelvsjoe was set on fire but quickly extinguished, police said.

Firefighters meanwhile, said a school in another immigrant-heavy suburb, Tensta, was set ablaze but quickly extinguished. A nursery school in the Kista suburb was also on fire.

The previous night, the fire brigade had been called to some 90 different blazes, most of them caused by rioters.

Earlier, rioters hurled rocks at a local police station in the Kista district, near the suburb of Husby where the unrest began on Sunday night.

In the southern suburb of Skogaas, a restaurant was badly damaged after it was set on fire.

And police in Soedertaelje, a town south of Stockholm, said rioters threw stones at them as they responded to reports of cars set alight.

Husby incident

The troubles are believed to have been triggered by the fatal police shooting of a 69-year-old Husby resident last week after the man wielded a machete in public.

The man then fled to his apartment, where police have said they tried to mediate but ended up shooting him dead in what they claimed was self-defence.

Two people, including one police officer, were reported injured in the first four nights of rioting.

About 80 percent of the 12,000 residents in Husby are immigrants.

Many of the immigrants who have arrived due to the country’s generous refugee policy struggle to learn the language and find employment despite numerous government programmes.

In the past decade, Sweden has welcomed hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and the Balkans, among others.

This is not the first time the Scandinavian country has seen riots among immigrants.

In 2010, up to 100 youths threw bricks, set fires and attacked the local police station in Rinkeby for two nights.

Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag attributed the violence to high unemployment and social exclusion in Sweden’s immigrant-dominated areas.

In Husby, overall unemployment was 8.8 percent in 2012, compared to 3.3 percent in Stockholm as a whole, according to official data.

And a total of 12 percent in Husby received social benefits last year, compared to 3.6 percent in Stockholm as a whole.

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Detectives said on Thursday they had arrested the unidentified suspects, both aged 29, over the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, 25, who was hacked to death in Woolwich on Wednesday.

“This is a large, complex and fast-moving investigation which continues to develop,” London police said in a statement. “Many lines of inquiry are being followed by detectives and the investigation is progressing well.”

Detectives said they were searching six houses; three in Greenwich in south London, one in Romford, east London, one in north London, and a property in Lincoln in central England.

Meanwhile, Rigby’s two main suspected attackers were in separate hospitals being treated for gun shot wounds. They were fired at by officers at the scene of the killing.

A new video has emerged of the two suspects, who appear to run at the police as they arrived at the scene of the crime.

They had been known to MI5 security services before the attack, reports said.

One man is believed to be 28-year-old Londoner Michael Adebolajo, who is of Nigerian descent, and is said to have converted to Islam 10 years ago. 

Rigby served in Afghanistan in 2009, Britain’s Ministry of Defence said.

Extra police

London deployed more than 1,200 extra police officers on the capital’s streets amid fears of a backlash on British Muslims.

The attackers had made references to Islam in amateur footage broadcast on television.

Footage broadcast by Britain’s ITV news channel showed a man, with hands soaked in blood and holding a meat cleaver and a knife, claiming that he had, motivated by Britain’s foreign policy, killed a soldier.

Witnesses said he requested to be filmed by a passerby and shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the killing.

In the amateur video, he said: “I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands, our women have to see the same … you people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

The second attacker is believed to be 22 years old.

‘Standing together’

Later on Thursday, President Barack Obama offered his support to Britain saying the US “stands resolute with the United Kingdom, our ally and friend, against violent extremism and terror,” in a statement.

“I look forward to my trip to the United Kingdom to participate in the June G-8 Summit, hosted by Prime Minister Cameron, which will include discussions on the important global security challenges our countries face together.” 

After a second meeting of the government’s emergency COBRA security council on Thursday, Cameron said the country would “defeat violent extremism by standing together”.

“This action was a betrayal of Islam and the Muslim communities that give so much to our country … we will not rest until we know every detail.”

Cameron also praised the actions of Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, a cub scout leader who confronted the attackers immediately after the violence and tried to talk them down.

“They told her they wanted to start a war in London and she replied, ‘you are going to lose, it is you against many,” Cameron said. “She speaks for all of us.”

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from Woolwich, said it was essential that political and religious leaders restore calm in the face of violence from the UK’s far-right. 

“The English Defence League wanted to use this to their advantage. They came out last night chanting ‘no surrender to Muslims,’ and clashed with riot police,” our correspondent said.

Police in the county of Kent, south of London, said they had charged a man with “religiously aggravated criminal damage and burglary” to a mosque.

The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the Woolwich attack, saying: “This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly.”

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But addressing an audience at the National Defence University on Thursday, he acknowledged the targeted strikes are no “cure-all” and said he is haunted by the civilians unintentionally killed.

Obama framed his speech as an attempt to redefine the nature and scope of terror threats facing the US, noting the weakening of al-Qaeda and the impending end of the US war in Afghanistan.

“So America is at a crossroads. We must define the nature and the scope of the struggle, or else it will define us,” said Obama, saying that threats to diplomatic facilities must be dealt with as well as “homegrown extremists”.

His speech came a day after his administration revealed for the first time that a fourth American citizen had been killed in secretive drone strikes abroad.

Guantanamo Bay a ‘glaring exception

The speech also reaffirmed Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, where terror suspects have been held.

Obama said the US is is committed to “capturing terrorist suspects” and prosecuting them, but that  “The glaring exception to this time-tested approach is the detention centre at Guantanamo Bay”.

“When I ran for president the first time, John McCain supported closing Gitmo. No person has ever escaped from one of our super-max or military prisons in the United States,” said Obama.

“Our courts have convicted hundreds of people for terrorism-related offences, including some who are more dangerous than most Gitmo detainees….there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should never have been opened,” said the president, who was heckled by a person in the audience on the issue of forcefeeding hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

Indeed, he was interrupted repeatedly by a woman who shouted “I love my country, I love the rule of law. The drones are making us less safe”.

The White House said on Wednesday that Obama’s speech coincided with the signing of new “presidential policy guidance” on when the US can use drone strikes.

Drafts of the guidance reviewed by counterterrorism officials gave control of drone strikes outside Pakistan and Yemen to the US military, enshrining into policy what is already common practice, according to two US officials briefed on the proposed changes.

Drone controversy

Obama has pledged to be more open with the public about the scope of the drone strikes. But a growing number of legislators in Congress are seeking to limit US authorities that support the deadly drone strikes, which have targeted a wider range of threats than initially anticipated.

“America cannot take strikes wherever we choose,” said Obama, saying that such strikes “save lives.”

He acknowledged civilian deaths as “a hard fact” that will “haunt us as long as we live.”

The speech comes amid growing impatience in Congress with the sweeping authority it gave the president after the September 11, 2001, attacks in light of the targeting of suspected terrorists with lethal drone strikes.

Republicans and Democrats fear that they have given the president a blank check for using military force worldwide.

Shifting the responsibility of some of the drone programme from the Central Intelligence Agency to the military has given Congress greater oversight of the secretive programme and members say they want even more.

Under the draft guidance, the CIA drone programme would remain up and running, to target al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas, with US troops drawing down in Afghanistan and concern rising that al-Qaeda might return in greater numbers to the region.

The military and the CIA currently work side by side in Yemen, with the CIA flying its drones over the northern region out of a covert base in Saudi Arabia, and the military flying its unmanned aerial vehicles from Djibouti.

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Moaz al-Khatib published his initiative on Facebook on Thursday, as the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) he headed until March gathered in Istanbul to choose a new leader and discuss a US-Russian peace initiative dubbed Geneva 2.

Under Khatib’s initiative, Assad would have 20 days from Thursday to give “his acceptance of a peaceful transition of authority”.

After accepting, Assad would have one month to hand over power to either Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi or Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa, who would then govern Syria for a transitional period of 100 days.

Khatib’s proposal is an effort to pull Syria “out from the catastrophe that has struck our nation”, said the former imam of Damascus’ Omayyad mosque.

It came as the SNC opened a three-day meeting in Istanbul to debate whether to agree to negotiate with the regime on ending the two-year civil war in the Geneva 2 conference, expected to take place next month.

Talks with regime

The opposition has long said it can only enter into talks with members of the regime if it is given international guarantees that the negotiations would lead to the fall of Assad’s regime.

In Cairo, the Arab League said in a statement it would submit a list of points to the UN Security Council “to help the next international conference in Geneva succeed”.

Thursday’s statement did not say what the points were, but officias – who spoke to AFP news agency on condition of anonymity - said the proposal would include forming a temporary national unity government and deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in Syria “to guarantee stability during the transitional period”.

Some opposition members have openly expressed reservations over the Geneva 2 conference.

“We don’t have a clear picture on Geneva 2. We don’t have a list of attendees, we don’t know what countries are going to attend, what’s the agenda, what’s being proposed, what are the final goals,” SNC spokesman Khaled al-Saleh told reporters.

On Khatib’s proposal, Saleh said it was a “personal initiative” that would be “submitted at the coalition meeting and maybe discussed”.

As part of the transition Khatib envisages, Assad would “leave the country along with 500 people whom he will select, along with their families and children, to any other country that may choose to host them”.

This is the first time one of Syria’s opposition chiefs has made an offer of political immunity to Assad and key members of his regime.

‘Practical response’

It is “a practical response to the need of a political settlement ensuring a peaceful transition of authority”, Khatib said.

Spotlight

The initiative gives Assad a month to “completely hand over authority”, and stipulates that while parliament should be dissolved, all of its powers should be handed to Assad’s replacement.

Over the same 100-day period, an interim government would “restructure the security and military” apparatus in Syria, said Khatib.

He also suggested that the UN should appoint an international mediator to oversee the transition.

At the end of the 100 days, the responsibilities of the current government would pass to the transitional government, formed with international guarantees, which would “be responsible for the preparation and the re-building of the new Syria,” Khatib said.

In Istanbul, the SNC was seeking to establish an opposition government under interim prime minister Ghassan Hitto, while discussing the group’s expansion to include 31 new members, a Coalition source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Hitto has pulled together a list of ministries and representatives for all but the interior and defence portfolios – but his proposals may not even see the light as he too may end up being replaced, the official added.

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Several dozen people were also injured in Thursday’s attacks, which were claimed by the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), as revenge for Niger’s involvement in a French-led military offensive in neighbouring Mali.

Twenty people were killed in the desert city of Agadez, located almost 1,000km northeast of the capital, where the attackers punched their explosive-laden car past the defences at a military garrison and succeeded in entering the base, said Minister of Defence Mahamadou Karidjo.

After a fierce gunbattle, security forces returned the town to calm but one attacker was still holding soldiers hostage, military sources and local officials said.

“We heard a strong detonation that woke the whole neighbourhood, it was so powerful,” Abdoulaye Harouna, a resident of Agadez, said. “The whole town is now surrounded by soldiers looking for the attackers.”

Mine attacked

Further north in Arlit, a car bomb struck at the Somair uranium mine operated by run by French nuclear group Areva.

Areva said one person was killed in the attack and 14 others injured.

Niger officials said crushing and grinding units had been badly damaged at the plant and uranium production had stopped.

The MUJAO, one of the groups which seized control of northern Mali last year before being driven out by French-led troops, claimed the near simultaneous bombings.

“Thanks to Allah, we have carried out two operations against the enemies of Islam in Niger,” MUJAO spokesman Abu Walid Sahraoui told the AFP news agency.

“We attacked France and Niger for its cooperation with France in the war against sharia [Islamic law].”

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The announcement came as reports on Thursday said the two main suspects involved in his gory murder a day earlier in Woolwich were known to security services.

“An extremely popular and witty soldier, Drummer Rigby was a larger than life personality within the Corps of Drums and was well known, liked and respected across the Second Fusiliers,” said a statement from the Ministry of Defence.

Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from London’s Scotland Yard, said: “Police have said ‘yes, these two [suspects] had cropped up in previous intelligence-gathering probes’, but they hadn’t proven to be of sufficient suspicion to be investigated any further.”

Meanwhile, London deployed more than 1,200 extra police officers on the capital’s streets amid fears of a backlash on British Muslims by right-wing supporters, as the attackers made references to Islam in amateur footage broadcast on television.

“People are shocked and scared from what they saw, but the government wants to make sure that there is no blame attributed to minorities. These extra police are on streets to reassure people,” he said.

Amateur video

Footage broadcast by Britain’s ITV news channel showed a man, with hands soaked in blood and holding a meat cleaver and a knife, claiming that he had killed a soldier motivated by Britain’s foreign policy.

Witnesses said Rigby’s attacker, who allegedly requested to be filmed by a passerby, shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the killing.

In the amateur video, the attacker said: “I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands, our women have to see the same … you people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

That man is believed to be 28-year old Londoner Michael Adebolajo, who is of Nigerian descent, and said to have converted to Islam 10 years ago. 

Later on Thursday, President Barack Obama offered his support to Britain saying the US “stands resolute with the United Kingdom, our ally and friend, against violent extremism and terror,” in a statement.

“I look forward to my trip to the United Kingdom to participate in the June G-8 Summit, hosted by Prime Minister Cameron, which will include discussions on the important global security challenges our countries face together.” 

‘Standing together’

After a second meeting of the government’s emergency COBRA security council on Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said the country would “defeat violent extremism by standing together”.

“This action was a betrayal of Islam and the Muslim communities that give so much to our country … we will not rest until we know every detail.”

Cameron also praised the actions of Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, a cub scout leader who confronted the attackers immediately after the violence and tried to talk them down.

“They told her they wanted to start a war in London and she replied, ‘you are going to lose, it is you against many,” Cameron said. “She speaks for all of us.”

‘Growing unease’

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from Woolwich, said it was essential that political and religious leaders restore calm in the face of violence from the UK’s far-right. 

“The English Defence League wanted to use this to their advantage. They came out last night chanting ‘no surrender to Muslims,’ and clashed with riot police,” our correspondent said.

More than 100 of the far-right group’s supporters, some in balaclavas, took to the streets on Wednesday evening.

“That expression of theirs has been widely echoed. There were two attacks on mosques overnight and there is a growing unease about who this man was and whether he is part of a broader movement.”

The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the attack, saying: “This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly.”

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Oklahoma Insurance Department spokeswoman Calley Herth told the AP news agency that the early damage tally is based on visual assessments of the disaster zone that stretches more than 27 kilometres and that Monday’s tornado was on the ground for 40 minutes.

The financial cost of the tornado in Moore could be greater than the $2 bn in damage from a 2011 tornado that killed 158 people in Joplin, Missouri, Herth said, adding that the Joplin tornado left a smaller trail of destruction.

For the first time Wednesday, authorities provided a clearer accounting of the destruction in Moore, a town of about 56,000 in a central US region known as Tornado Alley. Moore was also hit by a massive tornado in 1999.

Up to 13,000 homes were destroyed or damaged and 33,000 people were affected in some way by the storm, Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City mayor, said at a news conference.

He also put the monetary damage estimate at between $1.5bn to $2bn.

Emergency officials were unable to put a figure on the number of people left homeless, because many people have been taken in by relatives and only a few dozen have stayed overnight at Red Cross shelters.

Six adults remain unaccounted for since the tornado, said Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management Director Albert Ashwood. It is possible those people had just “walked off” their properties or could still be found in the rubble, Ashwood said.

President Barack Obama will travel to Moore on Sunday to view the damage first-hand and meet with victims and emergency personnel. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano visited the area on Wednesday, pledging the government’s support.

The National Weather Service said the tornado was a top-of-the-scale EF5 twister with winds of at least 322 kph, the first EF5 tornado of 2013.

The Oklahoma medical examiner’s office announced that it has positively identified 23 of the 24 people who died in the tornado.

Nine children were among the 24 killed, including seven who died at Plaza Towers Elementary School, which took a direct hit by the deadliest tornado to strike the US in two years.

Mayor Glen Lewis said Wednesday he would propose an ordinance in the next couple of days to modify building codes to require that every new home in the town would have a reinforced tornado shelter.

Underground safe rooms are typically built below garages and can cost around $4,000.

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren, reporting from Moore Oklahoma, said even after the lethal 1999 tornado, commercial and home builders have opposed new requirements for shelters to be installed.

No landmarks

Emergency crews had trouble navigating devastated neighbourhoods because there were no street signs left. Some rescuers used smartphones or GPS devices to guide them through areas with no recognisable landmarks.

More than 1,000 people had already registered for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which sent hundreds of workers to Oklahoma to help with the recovery.

Emergency workers pulled more than 100 survivors from the debris of homes, schools and hospital.

Plaza Towers Elementary was one of five schools in the path of the tornado.

Oklahoma State Police Sergeant Jeremy Lewis said that rescuers “literally were lifting walls up and kids were coming out”.

“They pulled kids out from under cinder blocks without a scratch on them,” Lewis said.

The National Weather Service (NWS) predicted a 10 percent chance of more tornadoes in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Illinois.

It said parts of four other states – Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Iowa – had a five percent risk of tornadoes.

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The bomb, containing about 100kg of explosives, targeted a lorry carrying members of a government paramilitary force on Thursday on the Northern Bypass road in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.

Quetta is the capital of the province of Balochistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran.

The province is considered one of the most deprived parts of Pakistan, which suffers from Taliban violence, a separatist insurgency and sectarian unrest.

Most of those wounded are said to be security personnel.

A bomb disposal officer said the nature of the device was not clear and experts were trying to ascertain whether it the explosion had been caused by an improvised explosive device (IED) or a suicide bomber.

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Witnesses said the victim was hacked to death with a machete-style knife in the Woolwich district in the southeast of the British capital on Wednesday.

Video footage filmed by an onlooker and broadcast by Britain’s ITV news channel showed a man with hands covered in blood and holding a bloodied meat cleaver and a knife.

“I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands, our women have to see the same,” he said. ”You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

Media reports said the victim was a serving British soldier.

“It is the most appalling crime,” Prime Minister David Cameron said, before cutting short a visit to Paris.

“The police are urgently seeking the full facts about this case but there are strong indications that it is a terrorist incident.”

Home Secretary Theresa May chaired a meeting with the government’s emergency COBRA security committee on Wednesday night in response to the attack. Another meeting is expected to take place on Thursday and will be hosted by Cameron.

She said two men were shot by armed police and were receiving treatment for their injuries.

Anti-Muslim sentiment

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from Woolwich, said two mosques had been attacked overnight on Wednesday.

“The English Defence League, a far right group, wanted to use this to their advantage, they came out last night chanting ‘no surrender to Muslims,’ and clashed with riot police.

“That expression of theirs has been widely echoed. There were two attacks on mosques overnight and there is a growing unease of unease about who this man was and whether he is part of a broader movement.”

Witnesses said the victim was wearing a T-shirt of military charity Help for Heroes, which assists wounded British veterans.

He was reportedly first hit by a car before the two men in that vehicle came out with a machete and a gun and started to attack to man.

Witnesses said the attackers had fearlessly approached police when they arrived and were then shot.

Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee, reporting from London, said people on social media platforms were expressing anti-Muslim sentiment after the incident as the men were said to have shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they attacked the man.

“It’s the kind of incident that lends itself very much to rumour and speculation,” he said. “People who have a pre-set agenda will be making the absolute best of it if they think it can further their cause.”

The far-right English Defence League called on supporters to mobilise.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it was urgently investigating reports that a serving soldier was involved in the incident.

Security was tightened in the area and at all London barracks after the incident. 

The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the attack, saying: “This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly.”

‘Lone wolves’

British counterterrorism chiefs have recently warned that radicalised individuals, so-called lone wolves who might have had no direct contact with al-Qaeda posed as great a risk as those who plotted attacks on the lines of the 2005 attacks.

Police forensics officers investigated the crime
scene where the man was killed [Reuters]

Shiraz Maher of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College, told Al Jazeera that British security services have become very good at foiling large-scale conspiracies. 

He said al-Qaeda has now told Muslims in the West who are sympathetic to their cause to instead launch small-scale attacks, without talking to others, “maybe do it alone, or with another friend; get a knife, get a machete.

“As you see in those kind of attacks, it doesn’t take much to cause widespread panic and fear, so they are almost impossible for police to guard against,” he said.

Britain’s involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past decade has occasionally made soldiers a target at home. British police have foiled at least two major plots in which suspects were accused of planning to kill off-duty troops.

Ahmed Jama, a 26-year-old resident in Woolwich, laid flowers down at the scene as a sign of respect to the families involved.

“This has nothing to do with Islam, this has nothing to do with our religion. This has nothing to do with Allah,” he said.

“It’s heartbreaking, it’s heartbreaking.”

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Media reports said a British soldier was killed in Wednesday’s incident in the Woolwich district in the southeast of the capital.

While details were scant, Prime Minister David Cameron called an emergency meeting of his government’s emergency COBRA security committee in response to the attack.

Police would not comment immediately on whether the incident appeared to be terror-related.

Witnesses said the man was hacked to death by two people.

Home Secretary Theresa May confirmed that one person had been “brutally murdered” and said two other men were shot by armed police and were receiving treatment for their injuries.

“This is a sickening and barbaric attack,” she said.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence said it was urgently investigating reports that a serving soldier was involved in the incident.

Security was tightened in the area immediately after the incident. Helicopters hovered above and nearby roads were sealed off by the police.

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