The big story England riots Grief, hate and healing

The fatal stabbing of three young girls in a seaside town was followed by a wave of antiimmigrant riots, provoked in part by online misinformation. As Southport tried to mourn, how did events take such a turn- and what do they reveal about the nation's communities?

- Josh Halliday and Robyn Vinter

After the singing and dancing, there was screaming. And then silence. Paramedics and firefighters crouched to the ground, ashen-faced, struggling to process the horror they had witnessed. The blue lights of their vehicles continued to flash two hours after the atrocity but their sirens were turned off. The only sound was from the police helicopter above.

More than a week later, Southport remains in a state of trauma. Many in the seaside town are struggling to come to terms not only with the barbarity of the 29 July attack, which left three young girls dead and several others in critical care, but also how its grief was so violently infringed a day later - first by far-right violence in the town and then by further online disinformation-fuelled disturbances across the country in the following days.

"There is a sense of horror and disbelief," said the Rev Marie-Anne Kent, whose church, St Philip and St Paul with Wesley, is around the corner from the Hart Space, the yoga studio where the holiday club attacks took place.

Kent, a Methodist minister, was speaking to the Guardian on the frontline of last Tuesday's riot, wearing her clerical collar, when a masked man shouted in her face: "Don't let Muslims in. They need to fuck off out of our country."

Horrified and shaken, she said: "I came down to pray for our Muslim brothers and sisters. This is appalling. This isn't Southport."

Kent was speaking last Friday, after the violence had spread to other towns and cities, with further shocking scenes to follow last weekend.