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France riots take malevolent turn
See also this AFP report - it's getting bad. From the French press about last night:

Nearly 900 vehicles were torched and 250-plus people arrested as French police desperately battled the country's worst rioting for decades, which has now raged for nine consecutive nights.

Again, the bulk of the violence on Saturday hit deprived suburbs with large immigrant populations on the fringes of Paris, although rioting again spread to several cities elsewhere in France, following a pattern seen in recent nights.

With authorities seemingly powerless to stem the tide of violence despite the mobilisation of hundreds of riot police, gangs of youths set cars on fire around Paris, especially in the northern suburbs where the trouble began.

A hundred people were evacuated overnight from two apartment blocks in one northern suburb after an arson attack set dozens of cars alight in an underground garage. Two textile warehouses and a car showroom were also torched to the northeast of the city.

A total of 253 people were detained for questioning, some of them minors caught with fire-bombs


Widespread riots across impoverished areas of France took a malevolent turn in a ninth night of violence, with youths torching an ambulance and stoning medical workers coming to the aid of a sick person. Authorities arrested more than 250 people, an unprecedented sweep since the beginning of the unrest.

Bands of youths also burned a nursery school, warehouses and nearly 900 cars overnight as the violence spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France. The U.S. warned Americans against taking trains to the airport through the affected areas.

At the nursery school in Acheres, west of Paris, part of the roof was caved in, childrens’ photos stuck to blackened walls, and melted plastic toys littered the floor.

The town had been previously untouched by the violence. Some residents demanded that the army be deployed, or that citizens rise up and form militias. At the school gate, the mayor tried to calm tempers.

“We are not going to start militias,” Mayor Alain Outreman said. “You would have to be everywhere.”

Violence spreads
Fires and other incidents were reported in Lille, Toulouse, Rouen and elsewhere on the second night of unrest in areas beyond metropolitan Paris. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole.

“This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?” Naima Mouis, a hospital worker in Suresnes, asked while looking at the hulk of her burned-out car.

On Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois, filing past burned-out cars to demand calm. One banner read: “No to violence.” Car torchings have become a daily fact in France’s tough suburbs, with about 100 each night.

Interior Ministry said nearly 900 vehicles were burned throughout France from Friday night to Saturday morning, most in the Paris area.

Arrests were also up sharply, with more than 250 people detained overnight, nearly all in the Paris area, said national police spokesman Patrick Hamon. Police deployed in smaller teams and used a helicopter to track bands of youths going from attack to attack, he said.

Police had made just 78 arrests in the Paris region the previous night.

The violence — sparked after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis — has laid bare discontent simmering in France’s poor suburbs ringing big cities. Those areas are home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin oversaw a Cabinet meeting Saturday to evaluate the situation.

Some 30 mayors from the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the unrest started met Friday to make a joint call for calm. Claude Pernes, mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois, denounced a “veritable guerrilla situation, urban insurrection” that has taken hold.

A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination among gangs in different areas. But he said youths in individual neighborhoods were communicating by cell phone text messages or e-mails — arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations.

U.S., Russia issue warnings
The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to avoid the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade.

An attack this week on a female bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence. The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set afire after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.

Late Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry officer said. The officer, not authorized to speak publicly, asked not to be named.

“I’m not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out,” said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq living near a burned carpet warehouse. “I have three children and I live in a five-story building. If a fire hit, what would I do?”

A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination between gangs in the various riot-hit suburbs. He said, however, that neighborhood youths were communicating between themselves using cell phone text messaging or e-mails to arrange meeting points and alert each other to police

Posted by: Omath Craling9476 2005-11-05
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=134140