Timeline: Riots in Britain

(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to adopt a zero tolerance crime strategy after four nights of looting and arson hit cities across England.

Following are some of the key events during the violence:

August 4, 2011 - Police investigating gun crime in a black community shoot 29-year-old Mark Duggan after stopping him in a taxi in Tottenham, north London. He dies at the scene.

August 6 - Duggan's friends and family gather outside Tottenham police station for a peaceful protest. About 200-300 people join the demonstration.

-- Later, missiles are thrown at police after what locals say is a dispute between a protester and a police officer.

August 6-7 - Violence continues through the night in Tottenham. Rioters attack banks and loot shops.

August 7-8 - Violence spreads to Enfield in northeast London. Shortly after, missiles are thrown in Brixton, south London. Rioters loot stores and destroy vehicles.

August 8 - Violence spreads to Hackney, northeast London and Clapham, an upmarket area in southwest London. Rioting follows in Ealing in the west and Woolwich in the east. London Mayor Boris Johnson says he will cut short his holiday and return.

-- Looting and violence spread to Britain's second biggest city Birmingham. Large fires break out in Croydon, south London.

August 8-9 - Rioting continues through the night in several parts of the capital. A police station is set alight in Birmingham and officers are called to a number of incidents in the northwest port city of Liverpool.

August 9 - Cameron condemns the disorder as "criminality pure and simple." He says there will be 16,000 police on the streets of the capital.

-- Cameron visits Croydon to see the damage from the previous night's violence. Johnson visits Clapham to thank volunteers for cleaning up.

-- In Salford, Greater Manchester, rioters throw bricks at police and set fire to buildings. A police station is firebombed by 30 to 40 males in Nottingham. Cars are burned and stores looted in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton in central England.

August 10 - In Birmingham, police launch a murder inquiry after three Muslim men are killed in a hit and run car incident. One person is arrested.

-- A surge in police numbers and heavy rain in many places help to calm streets in London, although missiles are thrown at police in Eltham in south London.

August 11 - Parliament is recalled and Cameron says he will keep a higher police presence of 16,000 officers on London streets through the weekend and will give police powers to demand the removal of face masks or other coverings if their wearers are suspected of crime.

-- Cameron tells parliament police tactics had failed at the start of the rioting. The Association of Chief Police Officers head, Hugh Orde, says "The fact that politicians chose to come back is an irrelevance in terms of the tactics that were by then developing."

-- Richard Mannington Bowes, who was injured an attack in Ealing on August 8, becomes the fifth person to die because of the riots. A 22-year-old man has been arrested.

Aug 12 - Steve Kavanagh, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, says 16,000 officers will remain on duty in the capital over the weekend.

Aug 13 - Cameron's decision to appoint William Bratton, credited with curbing street crime as police chief in New York, Los Angeles and Boston as an adviser, is a "slap in the face," an English police body says.

-- Two people have been charged with the murder of the three men hit by a car on August 10 in Birmingham.

Aug 14 - The Metropolitan Police say they have arrested 1,401 people in connection with the violence and looting around London - 808 people have been charged. West Midlands police have made over 509 arrests since the violence began.