North London's gang wars go global

Drug feud blood is now spilling over into Spain, Moldova and beyond

- WILL HOLT

On May 29 last year, a nine-year old girl sitting in a restaurant on Dalston's Kingsland Road was seriously injured when a motor-cyclist gunman opened fire. Three men sitting outside were also wounded.

The shooting of a child in one of Dalston's busiest thoroughfares appalled the local community, an eclectic mix of ageing Turkish shopkeepers, art students crammed into mouldy flatshares and affluent City types who have driven house prices to eye-watering peaks in nearby De Beauvoir and Shacklewell. Dalston's gentrification, however, hasn't eradicated its underworld.

Some have speculated that the young girl may have been caught in the crossfire of two rival gangs: the Tottenham Turks and the Hackney Bombers. This month, Kemal Armagan, who is believed to be a senior member of the Hackney Bombers, was arrested in the Turkish port of Izmir on suspicion of murdering a senior member of the Tottenham Turks.

Three weeks before the Dalston incident, a masked assassin shot dead a prominent Turkish drug trafficker in broad daylight in the middle of Barcelona. In July, a Turkish mobster awaiting extradition was peppered with seven bullets in the Moldovan capital, Chişinău.

"When we get to see the violence, it almost appears like it's low-level street gang on street gang," says Ian Broughton, a former Met detective. "It's not. These are sophisticated groups with international networks." The two gangs suspected of involvement have their deepest roots not in the underworld of Istanbul, however, but in the streets of north London.