Ferguson: Even as the people of Ferguson, cordoned off the still smouldering stores and began to clean the streets of their neighbourhood on Tuesday protesters gathered across the United States for more demonstrations.

The decision of a grand jury not to indict a white police officer for fatally shooting the black teen Michael Brown has prompted nationwide protests, with demonstrations reported in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle.

By Tuesday morning tens of protest organisations from across the United States and even in Canada had registered protests with the Ferguson National Response Network.

In Minneapolis a car ploughed through a solidarity rally on Tuesday afternoon, injuring at least one protester, the Star Tribune reported. Another crowd gathered in New Orleans where police have had a tense relationship with minority groups for years, while 200 more gathered in Detroit.

The demonstrations mainly were peaceful although steeped in emotion.

Activists urged the US Justice Department to charge Officer Darren Wilson with civil-rights violations and boycotting stores on the Black Friday shopping day on November 28. "This sore has been festering for years," said Abdul Al- Husani, 59, who joined about 100 people at a protest in South Los Angeles on Monday night. "If this kind of thing keeps happening, I don't know how people are going to react. We're just trying to channel our frustration in a positive way."

In Philadelphia, organisers planned to march again in the afternoon from City Hall to north Philadelphia to bring awareness to racist police actions, said Walter Smolarek, a local activist and organiser.

"We don't want this to be a one-day event," Mr Smolarek said by telephone. "This is the beginning of a movement."

Miami, which had a history of riots in the 1980s, has been "dead quiet" since the Ferguson decision was announced, according to county police.

In Ferguson, about a dozen buildings, including a pizza shop and a beauty parlor, burned overnight as protesters took to the streets in anger. Police said protesters fired guns at them, setpatrol cars on fire and hurled bricks into their lines.

Police fired tear gas and flash-bang cannisters at demonstrators, and 61 people were arrested. Police were also investigating as suspicious a body found in a car in Ferguson, and couldn't rule out a link between the death and the rioting.

Meanwhile, Ferguson's mayor James Knowles said the National Guard "was not deployed in enough time to save all of our businesses".

"The decision to delay the deployment of the National Guard is deeply concerning," Mr Knowles told a news conference. "We are asking that the governor make available and deploy all necessary resources to prevent the further destruction of property and the preservation of life in the city of Ferguson."

Outside Ferguson, many of the largest protests on Monday night occurred on the West Coast, which escaped the cold gripping much of the East and Midwest. Other protests were planned for Tuesday in Houston, Atlanta and Detroit.

Missouri's governor ordered hundreds more National Guard troops on Tuesday to Ferguson, a St Louis suburb rocked by rioting and looting after a grand jury declined to indict a white policeman in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

Attorneys for the family of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old shot to death in Ferguson by officer Darren Wilson in August, condemned as biased the St Louis County grand jury process that led to Monday's decision not to bring charges.

The killing in Ferguson, a predominantly black city with a white-dominated power structure, underscores the occasionally tense nature of US race relations and sometimes strained ties between African-American communities and the police.

The grand jury's decision sparked racially charged protests that were more intense than unrest that erupted in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but still much smaller than those that followed the acquittal of police officers in the beating of black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles two decades ago.

"Last night the rioters did some things to our community we all couldn't have woke up this morning imagining," Captain Ron Johnson, of Missouri Highway Patrol, told reporters.

Governor Jay Nixon said that about 700 guard troops were deployed on Monday and hundreds more will be out on Tuesday night to protect homes and businesses.

"This community deserves to have peace," Mr Nixon told a news conference, adding that more than 2200 guardsmen are now in the region. "We must do better and we will."

The unrest came despite calls by President Barack Obama and others for police and protesters to exercise restraint. Police had been preparing for months but admitted they were overtaken by the violent events that unfolded.

US Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters he was disappointed by the violent protesters he saw in Ferguson and has asked for a review to identify and isolate "criminal elements" from peaceful protesters.

with agencies