A crowd of about 400 foreign workers, angered by a fatal road accident, set fire to vehicles and attacked police and emergency services workers late Sunday in Singapore's ethnic Indian district, injuring at least 18 people in a rare riot in the city-state.
Police and eyewitnesses say the riot, the first major outburst of public violence here in more than four decades, started at about 9:23 p.m. local time (1323 GMT) after a bus hit and killed an unnamed 33-year-old Indian man in the Little India neighborhood, prompting large groups of South Asian workers to attack the bus with sticks and garbage bins.
Authorities quelled the violence before 11 p.m. after deploying 300 police officers to the scene, including its riot-control squad and Gurkha unit, police officials said in a news briefing early Monday, adding that officers didn't use any firearms to end the riot.
Police arrested 27 people, all of South Asian origin, who weren't named and couldn't be contacted. It wasn't clear if the arrested people have received legal representation. No Singaporeans were known to be involved in the violence, which didn't appear to be preplanned, officials said, adding that further arrests may be made in the coming days as investigations continue into the riot and the accident that sparked it.
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