Baltimore's wounds will take a long time to heal

A woman runs for safety as police throw tear gas canisters while enforcing the curfew in Baltimore. Photo / AP

Even after the fires were extinguished and the chaos quieted for much of the day, this city smouldered.

Baltimore's physical injuries were abundant and obvious, even as tensions flared again as darkness fell.

A line of police behind riot shields hurled smoke grenades and fired pepper balls at dozens of protesters to enforce a citywide curfew, imposed after the worst outbreak of rioting in Baltimore since 1968.

Demonstrators threw bottles at police, and picked up the smoke grenades and hurled them back at officers.

Twenty-four hours earlier, rioters and looters overran neighbourhoods and overwhelmed police. The harm inflicted was visible in the grey, ashen hunks of metal that had once been cars; the blackened holes that had been the doors and windows of buildings that used to house businesses.

But Baltimore's most profound wounds, the ones that will take longest to heal, were clear in the eyes of the city's people. They were pained, confused and ashamed - an emotional cauldron fuelled by anger.

Not just in West Baltimore, where Freddie Gray was taken into police custody on April 12 and died a week later from a severe spinal injury. This was ground zero for Tuesday's riots and yesterday's tension, a place rife with abject poverty and mistrust of the police.

Mary Clayton worked at a pharmacy that was looted and set ablaze. She trembled outside its charred shell, her suffering visceral.

"This is our home," she wailed. "It's destroyed." That same anguish washed over neighbourhoods throughout town.

In a West Baltimore church, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's own emotional conflict was on display. She grew teary-eyed as she voiced regret for calling the young rioters "thugs", blaming her use of the word on the fury she had felt.

Such fury, though, pulsed through the city from dawn until dusk, although the objects of the ire varied.

Just near where cars burned on West North Avenue hours earlier, Marvin Warfield swept up rubbish at the opening of an alley.

"Youth don't know how to articulate," he said, his voice rising. "The only way they know how is violence." The women cleaning next to him agreed, nodding. "How is you honouring Freddie Gray's legacy by doing that?" he continued.

- AP