A ten-year-old boy, his face covered by a handkerchief, captured the reality of how deeply raw hatred has become embedded.

Rage had so poisoned him he was prepared to hurl a brick the size of his head at rows of riot police poised to charge barely 30ft away.

There was no fear in this child's eyes just an anger hard to understand in one so young.

Around him were at least 60 teenagers and men launching volleys of petrol bombs, sticks and rocks at the massed police ranks.

Behind, hundreds of rage-ridden rioters dragged cars out into the middle of White Abbey Road, which were overturned and set them ablaze.

Many of these outlaws were children, but they were not playing a child's game.

Facing them were a dozen mounted officers each striking a mighty figure immersed in smoke from the onslaught of petrol bombs and burning cars.

Statuesque riot police stood five deep behind, plastic shield raised and nerves at the limit of human endurance.

Since 5.30pm they had been charging and retreating, ebbing and flowing in a battle of attrition hoping the rioters would tire themselves out.

When they charged the mob scattered, some ran into gardens others far up White Abbey Road and more still into side streets.

Slowly they returned and when they regrouped the sheer enormity of the task facing the police hit home.

Rioters swept up the hill and out of sight by the hundred. There was no single source for the thunderous wall of sound they made, it was all around.

One minute the rumbling was from the crowds, the next it was from a petrol bomb or yet another car being set alight.

A group of about 60 took the battle to police at the front, daring to run within 15ft of the lines with their weapons.

Their faces were contorted with anger and the language was one proclaiming the streets as their own.

A picture of hate had impressed itself upon each of them and the emotion found its perverse joy in the destruction of a community.

From the sides, people living on the edge of the war shouted out of fear and anger at the crowds.

The anger was mainly in the suspicion that the Asians involved were not from Bradford.

As one resident said: "Why would lads from Bradford do this? This is where they live, these are their homes.

"Definitely they were involved earlier but now they have mostly gone and the ones who are fighting the police are from outside the area.

"But we are the ones who suffer and it is the Asians of Bradford who will be labelled as the troublemakers.

"The NF had their cake when the festival was cancelled and now all this has kicked off they are happily munching away."

Condemnation came from across the cultural divide, the battle was not one of race and people knew it.

What little they could do was done together but in the knowledge that they were fighting an irrational hate.

By now night was falling and the number of police casualties rapidly rising.

Wounded officers were regularly being carried back from the front lines to the paramedics while others sat down through sheer exhaustion.

The petrol bombs were easily picked out from the smoky sky as they rained down, but the rocks and metal weapons were not so easy to distinguish from the night.

And the tension on all sides was growing.

Crowds watching on from the Melborn Hotel suddenly became agitated when about six riot police arrested an Asian man who did not appear to be resisting.

Shouting at their captive, they pinned him against a wall for a couple of minutes and had to fend off people angry at their actions.

"There's no need for it," said one man. "He's not giving them any trouble. We may not know what he's done but whey do they have to treat him so badly?"

Another driver, somehow oblivious to the clashes, was told in no uncertain terms by officers to make a swift exit.

This was a night when Bradford had been laid siege to by a wave of violence which had wound its way across northern inner cities.

There could be no negotiating with the gangs because they had no demands just one aim - annihilation.