UK riots aftermath: A nation's pain

"I want to be able to bury him so that he is at rest, but the police cannot release the body," says Khansa Ali, 22, the pregnant wife of one of the three men mown down in Birmingham in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

"I didn't want a post mortem because it is against Islam, and now I just want bury my husband."

Ali, who is four months pregnant and finds herself widowed six months after coming to Britain from Rawalpindi in Pakistan to begin a life with her new husband, spent yesterday mourning at the Allens Rd mosque with her husband's distraught family and friends, trying to picture a life in England with a new baby but no husband.

The tiny mosque is a five-minute drive from the Jet petrol station in Winson Green where her husband, Shazad, 30, his brother, Abdul Musavir Khan, 31, and a third man, Haroon Jahan, 21, were hit and killed while trying to protect shops from looting and vandalism during Wednesday's violence.

The tension in the city's streets on Thursday was palpable as threats of racial violence and recriminations escalated within hours of the deaths. But by yesterday, one man had helped to restore some calm.

Tariq Jahan, father of Haroon, may have single-handedly stopped parts of Birmingham from self-combusting with his unforgettable plea for peace, according to the chief constable of West Midlands Police.

Speaking outside the petrol station after meeting Jahan and his family, who live just around the corner, Chief Constable Chris Sims was full of praise for Jahan's intervention.

"An awful lot of work was being done yesterday by communities across Birmingham," he said. "But I think most of us would see that the intervention he felt able to make, which was one of the most powerful, generous and far-sighted interventions I have ever seen, at a moment of absolute grief and devastation, was decisive in terms of Birmingham not suffering tension and violence between communities."

Yesterday detectives held three more men, aged 16, 17 and 26, on suspicion of murder. A fourth man, 32, arrested on Thursday after he allegedly torched the car that was driven into the three men, was bailed after being questioned for 36 hours. This brings the number of people arrested in the West Midlands to nearly 400, of whom 26 were sentenced during Thursday's all-night sitting at Solihull Court.

Jahan, now a reluctant hero, publicly accepted condolences from Afro-Caribbean community leaders yesterday and reiterated his opposition to violence. Another call for calm was made, albeit less publicly, by the father of the dead brothers.

Ghazanfar Ali, 63, speaking for the first time through an interpreter, appeared frailer than his years as he stood outside the mosque, where dozens had gathered to pay respects for a second day.

"I want everyone to pray for my children; that's all the family now wants because there is nothing else we can do. I saw them lying on the floor with my own two eyes but I still can't believe that they are dead."

His only remaining son, Abdul Quddoos Khan, 33, was chain-smoking in an attempt to stay calm. He says he spent Thursday convincing young, angry Muslim men that revenge and violence were not what his family wanted.

"I am angry but violence wouldn't achieve anything except make another mother and father lose their child; what good would that do? We have to stay calm; everyone has to stay calm because we are looking for justice."

There was an uneasy calm in Birmingham yesterday but the large police presence cannot last for ever.

- Independent