Latest youth gang murder
Updated on 05 January 2008
Another teenage boy has died and two others have been injured in a fight, in a year that saw many gang murders among young people.
A murder enquiry has been launched after this latest knife attack in Erith in south-east London but so far no arrests have been made.
One of the two injured youths is still in hospital in a serious and stable condition but the other one has since been discharged.
The teenager who died has not yet been formally identified and police are in the process of tracing his next of kin.
This incident comes as a new Merseyside project is launched aimed at reducing tension between rival teenage gangs which led to the tragic death of an 11-year-old boy in Liverpool earlier this year.
Rhys Jones' shooting in Liverpool on his way home from playing football was the most high profile of these killings.
The murder of this innocent school boy believed to have been caught in the cross fire of two rival gangs, brought national attention to Liverpool and its violent gang culture.
The city's gangs traditionally define themselves by postcode. Croxteth and Norris Green in L11, for example, are fierce rivals but areas are also divided along racial lines.
'It's not up to boring men in suits like me to come up with solutions.'Liverpool city councillor Colin Eldridge
After the Jones killing lots of institutions, communities and politicians said they wanted to take action and the government stepped in with a national gang task force.
Four months on, the headlines have left Liverpool but how has the community in Merseyside responded?
Frustrated by what some see as a lack of real action, despite the government talking tough, the community has decided to try and find its own solution with a project aimed at breaking down the barriers of the area's gang culture.
Teenagers from the rival areas of Toxteth and Anfield are taken on bus tours of each other's neighbourhoods, for example. For most it is their first experience of crossing these city lines.
Initially this project received no official funding. The question is, should the authorities be looking to solutions like this that come from within communities themselves?
Liverpool city councillor Colin Eldridge said: "That's fair comment. It's not up to boring men in suits like me to come up with solutions.
"The government is looking at the role that local projects can play but Liverpool's deputy chief constable and head of the national gangs task force, John Murphy, says they must be properly evaluated."
Murphy added: "It's hard to say what works and what doesn't. We're trying to put together a national evaluation process."
Could other cities learn from Liverpool's approach?
The government says that overall, gun crime is falling but the death of so many young people in the last year has led to much soul-searching about Britain's gun culture and what can be done to stop anymore young people being killed.
