Youths™ have fought running battles with French police in a second night of violence in Paris suburbs, leaving more than 60 police officers injured. Five of the officers are said to be in a critical condition. Rioting began in Villiers-le-Bel, on the northern edge of Paris, after two teenagers riding a motorbike died in a crash with a police car on Sunday.
The Youths™ who died were of North African origin. Similar riots rocked mainly deprived French suburbs in 2005.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is currently in China, has appealed for calm.
The BBC's Alasdair Sandford in Paris says the violence was worse than on the first night. Gangs of youths attacked police with petrol bombs and stones. Police say firearms were used against them, injuring several officers. They responded with tear gas and rubber bullets.
The violence spread to five towns across the Val d'Oise department, north of Paris. Cars were set on fire and two schools, a library and shops were badly damaged.
The French Interior Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, said she believed the trouble was organised.
| No, reeeeaaallly? |
The events have brought to the surface the simmering resentment and hatred among many young people in poor French suburbs towards the police, our correspondent says. Complaints of police harassment and discrimination are widespread in such areas, where many families are of African origin.
Discrimination against infidels and harrassment of women is
| common in the same locations ... |
A state prosecutor has ordered the National Police General Inspectorate (IGPN) - an oversight body - to carry out a detailed inquiry into the circumstances in which the two teenagers - named only as Moushin, 15, and Larami, 16, lost their lives. Police sources say that in Sunday's incident, the motorcycle was going at top speed, it was not registered for street use, the two teenagers were not wearing helmets and they ignored traffic rules.
Plus, it was a MINI motorbike, a rich man toy which is widespread in the impoverished 'hoods, along with the 4-wheels quad motorbike. Having two dumbasses on one of that... thing, with no helmet and at top speed was Jackass-like; "Hi, my name is Johnny Knoxville,..." were their last words.
The police car was on a routine patrol and the teenagers were not being chased by police at the time, officials said.
The prosecutor who has ordered the investigation, Marie-Therese de Givry, told LCI television that the teenagers had turned into the path of the police car. She said the officers immediately called emergency services to the scene. Two witnesses are said to have confirmed this, but the teenagers' relatives and other local residents say the police did nothing to help the dying teenagers.
President Sarkozy said he wanted "everyone to calm down and let the justice system decide who was responsible." When he was interior minister in 2005, country-wide riots erupted after the electrocution of two teenagers in an electricity sub-station in the nearby suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. They were reported to have been fleeing police at the time.
Mr Sarkozy was heavily criticised two years ago after he called for crime-ridden neighbourhoods to be "cleaned with a power hose" and described violent elements as "gangrene" and "rabble".
Auntie BBC is mistranslating; gangrene, wtf???? Sarko was on electoral tour, and a woman at a window shout to him " when are you going to rid us of the scum?"; Sarko, who was then the interior minister, used a common politician trick, and shout back at her using her own language "the scum, we'll get you rid of it". Problem is, there was a whole trail of msm following him and his entourage, and the gvt-owned France 2 cut up the exchange, so it appeared Sarko was saying "scum" (racailles, which is the accepted name the Bad Boyz give to themselves, by the way) of his own, which was a dirty trick, but then, Sarko was perceived by the left as the new Devil, worse than Le pen (himself worse than hitler), so, it was not surprizing.