Rioting Spreads From Paris Across France

[Gold9472]

French riots rage despite warning

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4411192.stm

France has suffered its heaviest riot damage yet as warnings of tough prison sentences failed to deter arsonists.

Police reported 1,295 vehicle burnings and made 312 arrests as unrest in African and Arab communities spread to Strasbourg, Toulouse and Nantes.

On the 10th consecutive night of riots, four cars were torched on Place de la Republique in central Paris along with others in the central 17th District.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy had warned of stiff jail sentences.

In some areas of Paris, night buses were cancelled as a precaution.

Police helicopters patrolled the skies over the capital, attempting to pursue and identify those responsible for the attacks.

Unrest began after the deaths of two youths in the rundown Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois on 27 October, who were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station after reportedly fleeing police.

The northern town of Evreux in Normandy saw some of the worst unrest overnight with at least 30 cars burned along with three shops, the local authorities said.

A school was also petrol-bombed in the town while four police officers were injured in clashes with youths, some of them reportedly wielding baseball bats.

Saturday night's violence was the worst reported to date:

• A McDonald's was rammed by a car and almost completely burnt out in Corbeil-Essonnes, south of Paris
• Five classrooms of a nursery in Grigny, south of Paris, were destroyed by fire while a primary school was also slightly damaged
• A recycling facility was attacked in the Essone area near Paris, with 800 sq m of paper going up in flames and at least 35 vehicles torched
• In Drancy, north-east of Paris, two teenagers were caught and handed over to police after they tried to set fire to a lorry.

Marches
Earlier on Saturday hundreds of people joined marches in Paris suburbs to protest against the violence.

In Aulnay-sous-Bois, which has seen some of the worst of the rioting, residents walked past burnt out vehicles and buildings with banners reading "No to violence" and "Yes to dialogue".

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met eight key ministers and the head of the Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur.

After the meeting, Mr Boubakeur urged a change in tone from the government.

"What I want from the authorities, from Mr Nicolas Sarkozy, the prime minister and senior officials are words of peace," he said.

Mr de Villepin has been holding a series of meetings with public figures and ordinary people from the affected areas as he seeks an end to the crisis.

Mr Sarkozy's much-quoted description of urban vandals as "rabble" (racaille) a few days before the riots began is said by many to have already created tension.

Reports of a police tear gas grenade hitting a mosque during the riots further inflamed feelings.

[Gold9472]

Rioting Spreads to 300 Towns in France

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051107/...france_rioting

By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago

PARIS - Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.

As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm.

Meanwhile, governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in France.

On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started last month, national police chief Michel Gaudin told a news conference.

Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan advised their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the United States, Russia and at least a half dozen other countries in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit areas.

The victim was identified as Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, a retired auto industry worker who died after being beaten by an attacker. He was trying to extinguish a trash can fire Friday at his housing project in the northeastern suburb of Stains when an attacker caught him by surprise and beat him into a coma, police said.

Apparent copycat attacks spread outside France for the first time, with five cars torched outside Brussels' main train station, police in the Belgian capital said.

The mayhem started as an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects and has fanned out nationwide among disaffected youths, mostly of Muslim or African origin, to become France's worst civil unrest in more than a decade.

Attacks overnight Sunday to Monday were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said.

"This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said, noting that the violence appeared to be sliding away from its flash point in the Parisian suburbs and worsening elsewhere.

It was the first time police had been injured by weapons' fire and there were signs that rioters were deliberately seeking out clashes with police, officials said.

Among the injured police, 10 were hurt by youths firing fine-grain birdshot in a late-night clash in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Two were hospitalized, but the injuries were not considered life-threatening. One was wounded in the neck, the other in the legs.

The unrest began Oct. 27 in the low-income Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois after the deaths of two teenagers of Mauritanian and Tunisian origin. The youths were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation. They apparently thought they were being chased.

About 4,700 cars have been burned in France since the rioting began and 1,200 suspects were detained at least temporarily, Gaudin said.

The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair — fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as for Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out.

France, with 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.

President Jacques Chirac, whose government is under intense pressure to halt the violence, promised stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first public comments Sunday since the riots started.

"The law must have the last word," Chirac said after a security meeting with top ministers. France is determined "to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear, and they will be arrested, judged and punished."

France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that forbade all those "who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others."

Arsonists burned two schools and a bus in the central city of Saint-Etienne and its suburbs, and two people were injured in the bus attack. Churches were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete, he said.

In Colombes in suburban Paris, youths pelted a bus with rocks, sending a 13-month-old child to the hospital with a head injury, Hamon said, while a daycare center was burned in Saint-Maurice, another Paris suburb.

Much of the youths' anger has focused on law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose reference to the troublemakers as "scum" appeared to inflame passions.

[Gold9472]

France declares state of emergency over riots
Nation will call up police reservists and impose curfews to control the violence

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dl...511080478/1012

By Jocelyn Gecker
11/7/2005

PARIS -- France will impose curfews under a state-of-emergency law and call up police reservists to stop rioting that has spread out of Paris' suburbs and into nearly 300 cities and towns across the country, the prime minister said Monday. He called a return to order "our No. 1 responsibility."

The tough new measures came as France's worst civil unrest in decades entered a 12th night, with rioters in the southern city of Toulouse setting fire to a bus and pelting police with gasoline bombs and rocks. Earlier, a 61-year-old retired auto worker died of wounds from an attack last week, the first death resulting from the violence.

Asked on TF1 television whether the army should be brought in, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said, "We are not at that point."

But "at each step, we will take the necessary measures to re-establish order very quickly throughout France," he said.

The new measures followed the worst overnight violence so far, and foreign governments warned their citizens to be careful in France. Apparent copycat attacks took place outside France, with five cars torched outside the main train station in Brussels, Belgium. German police were investigating the burning of five cars in Berlin.

The violence started Oct. 27 among youths in a northeastern Paris suburb angry about the accidental deaths of two teens. But it has grown into a nationwide storm of burning and clashes with police. The mayhem is forcing France to confront anger building for decades in neglected suburbs and among the French-born children of Arab and black African immigrants.

The teenagers whose deaths sparked the rioting were of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent. They were electrocuted as they hid in a power substation, apparently thinking they were being chased by police.

President Jacques Chirac, in private comments more conciliatory than his warnings Sunday that rioters would be caught and punished, acknowledged in a meeting Monday with Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga that France has not integrated immigrant youths, she said.

Chirac deplored the "ghettoization of youths of African or North African origin" and recognized "the incapacity of French society to fully accept them," Vike-Freiberga said.

[jetsetlemming]

[QUOTE=Gold9472]
The teenagers whose deaths sparked the rioting were of Mauritanian and Tunisian descent. They were electrocuted as they hid in a power substation, apparently thinking they were being chased by police.[QUOTE]
You know, I was called jetdouche for saying this at the beginning of the thread.

[jetsetlemming]

hey look, another bullshit post by jetsdouche!!!!

Such intelligence. Isn't he smart? We should all admire 9/11:Inside job for his superior intellect and ability to check facts before he speaks. Genuis!

[princesskittypoo]

i thought we were a friendly bunch of people... instead of calling names how about helping each other call attention to problems.