Teenage killings: 'Arms race' warning as another youth is killed

· Stabbed teenager is 26th victim in London this year
· Community leader fears violence out of control

Senior police advisers and community leaders warned yesterday that youth violence was spiralling out of control on inner-city streets after another teenager was killed in London. Oliver King-Onzila became the 26th teenager to be murdered in the capital this year when he was knifed outside a bar on Saturday.

The killing means that teenage homicides in the first nine months of this year already equal the number for all of 2007 in the Metropolitan police area. Since 2000, the number of teenagers killed on the capital's streets has risen year on year.

Sir Ian Blair, the Met police commissioner, said during a spate of killings last year that the violence among young people was "completely unacceptable" and he was "not prepared to tolerate this continued sequence of senseless killings". But despite a high-profile police presence on the streets and more stops and searches, the number of stabbings has risen.

King-Onzila, 19, who captained Barnet's youth football team, died in a fracas outside the E Bar in Croydon, south London. Barnet's manager, Paul Fairclough, described him as "a gentle giant".

Cindy Butts, a deputy chair of the Metropolitan police authority and specialist in gun and knife crime, said: "I think we must brace ourselves. It is like an arms race ... The more young people are aware that other young people are carrying knives, the more likely they will be to carry one."

Raymond Stevenson, a community leader in Brixton, said: "Next year the figures will go up again because we are at the beginning of the spiral, not at the end."

Stevenson alleged that government "neglect" of urban areas gave young people "the worst teachers in the most rundown schools, no after-school provision and no hope". He said the " underinvestment in urban communities is a national disaster". His own violence awareness group, Urban Concepts, has had its Home Office funding withdrawn.