Police Find Fuel Bomb Factory Near Paris
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Police Find Fuel Bomb Factory Near Paris
Nov 6, 9:27 AM (ET)
By ELAINE GANLEY
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(AP) The wreckage of a burned down gymnasium in Noisy-le Grand, east of Paris, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005. ...
PARIS (AP) - Worsening urban unrest reached central Paris for the first time early Sunday and youths set ablaze shops, businesses, schools and nearly 1,300 cars from France's Mediterranean resort towns to the German border.
Some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security overnight while firefighters moved out around the city to douse blazing vehicles. Police reported nearly 200 arrests nationwide.
Police also found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a rundown building in Evry, a southern Paris suburb that contained 150 explosives, more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters' faces, Jean-Marie Huet, a senior Justice Ministry official, said Sunday.
For the second night in a row, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed the Paris suburbs from the air and small teams of police were deployed to chase down rioters speeding from one attack to another in cars and on motorbikes.
The violence took a potentially alarming turn with attacks in the well-guarded French capital. Police said 32 cars were set afire there, mostly on the northern and southern edges of the city.
Inside the city, three cars were damaged by fire from gasoline bombs near the Place de la Republique neighborhood, where residents said they heard a loud explosion and saw flames shooting into the sky.
"We were very afraid," said Annie Partouche, 55, who had watched the cars burning from her apartment window. "We were afraid to leave the building."
The violence - originally concentrated in northeastern suburbs of Paris with large immigrant populations - is forcing France to confront anger long-simmering in the neighborhoods, where many Arab and African Muslim immigrants live on society's margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity.
Unrest spread Saturday night across France, extending west to the rolling fields of Normandy and south to Nice and Cannes on the Mediterranean coast.
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(AP) Youths look at the wreckage of a burned down gymnasium in Noisy-le Grand, east of Paris, Sunday,...
The Normandy town of Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, appeared to suffer the worst damage. Arsonists burned at least 50 vehicles, part of a shopping center, a post office and two schools, said Patrick Hamon, spokesman for the national police.
Five police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with youths in the town, Hamon said.
"Rioters attacked us with baseball bats," Philippe Jofres, a deputy fire chief from the area told France-2 television. "We were attacked with pickaxes. It was war."
Fires also were reported in Nantes in the southwest, the Lille region in the north, and Saint-Dizier in the Ardennes region east of Paris. In the eastern city of Strasbourg near the German border, 18 cars were set ablaze, police said.
Seven classrooms went up in flames in the Essonne region south of Paris.
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(AP) People look at the wreckage of a burned down gymnasium in Noisy-le Grand, east of Paris, Sunday,...
The number of cars torched overnight - 1,295 across France - was the highest since the violence began Oct. 27, France-Info radio and other French media reported. Police, who earlier put the number at 918, did not immediately confirm the figure.
The night before, 900 vehicles were burned throughout the country.
The rioting began 10 days ago after two teenagers of north African descent were accidentally electrocuted as they hid in a power substation, apparently believing police were chasing them. Anger was then fanned anew days ago when a tear gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois - the northern suburb where the youths died.
Government officials have held a series of meetings with Muslim religious leaders, local officials and youths from poor suburbs to try to calm the violence.
The director of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, one of the country's leading Muslim figures, met Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Saturday and urged the government to choose its words carefully and send a message of peace.
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(AP) The kitchen and counter of a McDonald's fast food restaurant lies wrecked in Corbeil-Essonnes,...
"In such difficult circumstances, every word counts," Boubakeur said.
The anger over the deaths of the teenagers spread to the Internet, with sites mourning the youths.
Along with messages of condolence and appeals for calm were insults targeting police, threats of more violence and warnings that the unrest will feed support for France's anti-immigration extreme right.
Arsonists have also burned grocery stores, video stores and other businesses in what Hamon called "copycat" crimes. "All these hoodlums see others setting fires and say they can do it, too."
France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with 5 million people.
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Associated Press writers John Leicester, Jamey Keaten and Emmanuel Guillemain d'Echon contributed to this report.