Aborigines angered over the death of a young cyclist have rioted in a ghetto near the centre of Sydney in a nine-hour battle against police.
Armed with garbage bins filled with paving bricks and beer bottles, Molotov cocktails and fireworks, about 100 Aborigines attacked police and set fire to a railway station in Redfern, an inner-city suburb that is home to a notorious Aboriginal area called "The Block".
It took 200 police nine hours to bring the rioters under control, with about 40 police injured. Eight police officers remained in hospital today. Dozens of police were injured, many with broken bones, in one of the worst outbreaks of civil unrest in Australia's largest city in at least a decade.
Five people were arrested either during or after the riot, but it was not clear how many Aborigines were injured.
The riot was triggered by the death of Thomas Hickey, who was impaled on a metal fence after falling from his bicycle on Saturday. He died in hospital yesterday morning.
His mother, Gail, said her son was injured while being pursued by police. Police say patrolling officers merely passed by the boy who then sped off, losing control of his bike.
"My son's friends got wild . . . so they started throwing things at them [police officers]. They [the police] deserve all they get," Gail Hickey told local radio.
"My 17-year-old boy was just coming down to get money off his mother and then these dogs . . . end up killing my son," she said of the police. "The police . . . killed my son."
"The Block" is a ghetto of a few streets of dilapidated houses. It is a no-man's-land for white Australians and has been the site of confrontations between Aborigines and police for years.