Cameron: UK rioters 'will pay'

LONDON - Prime Minister David Cameron, grappling with what could prove a defining crisis of his premiership, told parliament on Thursday that rioters behind Britain's worst violence in decades would be tracked down and punished.

"The fightback has well and truly begun," he said in a statement to an emergency session of parliament, telling rioters: "You will pay for what you have done."

Cameron is under pressure to soften austerity plans, toughen policing and do more for inner-city communities, even as economic malaise grips a nation whose social and perhaps racial tensions have exploded in four nights of bewildering mayhem.