| This is looking like an urban insurgency |
Six youths, all aged under 18, were arrested in a raid on a building in Evry, south of Paris, where more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters' faces were found.
Jean-Marie Huet, the Justice Ministry's director of criminal affairs and pardons, said the Police found: "150 bottles prepared for use as Molotov cocktails, of which 50 were ready to be used," and "tens of litres of gasoline and hoods".
Saturday night's rioting was the most destructive so far as 1,300 vehicles were set alight and 349 people arrested, despite an enhanced police presence.
So far more than 800 people have been arrested and 3,500 vehicles torched, mainly in the working-class, high-immigration outer suburbs of Paris where unemployment is as high as 20 percent.
Cars were burned out in the historic centre of Paris for the first time on Saturday night. In the normally quiet Normandy town of Evreux, a shopping mall, 50 vehicles, a post office and two schools went up in flames.
An extra 2,300 police officers have been drafted in across the country but the unrest has shown no sign of abating. Authorities have struggled address a problem with complex social, economic and racial causes.
Jean-Louis Debre, mayor Evreux and speaker of the lower house of parliament, told France Info radio: "To those responsible for the violence, I want to say: Be serious
If you want to live in a fairer, more fraternal society, this is not how to go about it."
But authorities now say the rolling nightly riots are being organised via the Internet and mobile phones, and have pointed the finger at drug traffickers and Islamist militants.
The number of incidents in the Paris region was similar to the night before, but in the provinces it was up sharply.