Posted on 11/01/2005 8:13:18 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
GANGS of youths in towns around Paris clashed with police and torched cars and trash cans overnight as violence that has plagued one poor suburb for almost a week spread around the French capital, police and local authorities said today.
The epicentre of the trouble, which first erupted last Thursday after the deaths of two teenagers, is the poor northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois in the Seine-Saint-Denis department.
Police sources reported about 60 vehicles torched throughout the Seine-Saint-Denis area overnight.
In the towns of Aulnay-sous-Bois and Sevran, gangs of stone-throwing youths were met by police firing disabling rubber "flash-balls" to disperse them.
"It's a rough night," a departmental spokesman said.
There was less trouble overnight in Clichy-sous-Bois itself - which has a large immigrant and Muslim population - partly due to the heavy police presence there.
But more worryingly for the security forces, there were pockets of similar trouble for the first time in several other departments ringing Paris.
Cars were torched and police reported sporadic incidents involving groups of youths in Val-d'Oise to the north of the capital and Seine-et-Marne to the southeast with lesser violence reported in Yvelines to the west.
French government leaders came under fire yesterday for their handling of the unrest.
The main opposition Socialists accused President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin of an "inexcusable" silence over the violence.
But most of their anger was directed toward Nicolas Sarkozy, the ambitious interior minister and would-be president, whose tough rhetoric on urban crime has aroused charges of pandering to the far right.
"When an interior minister doesn't hesitate to use insulting terms, branding as 'rabble' communities which have the misfortune to be fragile and wanting to turn water-cannon on them, it is the image of the country that is tarnished," the Socialist Party said.
Mr Sarkozy, who is also leader of France's ruling UMP party, vowed to wage a "war without mercy" on crime in the Paris suburbs a week before the rampages began.
The violence in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, erupted after two youths, aged 15 and 19, were electrocuted after scaling the wall of a relay station and touching a transformer.
The local public prosecutor, Francois Molins, said the boys thought they were being chased by police, but authorities denied that was the case.
A judicial enquiry has been opened to determine the sequence of events leading up to the electrocution deaths of the two youths last week, which first sparked the violence.
About 30 official and youth leaders met Mr Sarkozy late yesterday to discuss the situation.
The ministry said that participants had considered the growing concern over poor living conditions in the worst-off suburbs where "the residents encounter serious problems".
Mr Sarkozy spoke of the need for "considerable efforts" and promised town mayors help in "effecting the best responses" in particular in the areas of unemployment, education and infrastructure.
Suburbs as as Clichy-sous-Bois suffer from unemployment rates more than twice the national average, which is already relatively high at about 10 per cent.
At least last night's violence included less of the direct clashes between youths and police seen on previous nights in Clichy-sous-Bois, police and municipal sources said.
Along with the dozens of torched vehicles, a carpet warehouse was set ablaze in another Seine-Saint-Denis town overnight, but no one was hurt.
Screw the Frogs!!!!
Muslims RIOT In France.
What is the mainstream media afraid of telling us?
Policemen patrol in the northern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, after police clashed with angry youths for the fifth straight night following the death by electrocution, 27 October, of two boys trying to escape from police. The violence which has plagued a largely-immigrant Paris suburb for almost a week spread to several other departments bordering the French capital overnight, with many cars set ablaze, French authorities said.
Guess they haven't found anyone to surrender to yet
Hmmmm.... a poor suburb? In France? How can that be? /s
Seems to me that I remember that the pioneers that made this country great lived in poor conditions. Doesn't living in a dugout, burning Buffalo chips for fuel qualify? If poverty were really an excuse for all kinds of social ills, then the human race sould have self destructed millenia ago. They're acting like animals because they are.
It's easy to tell that the Muslim immigrants haven't assimilated into French society. They actually fight!
If they don't think about it, it will go away :-)
They had their chance to join with us to fight these
people but they want to make nice and in the end
will have to make a decision, get real or start making
prayer rugs.
These aren't riots..they are an insurrection.
Insurrectionists should be shot on sight.
France's very existance is on the line.
No pun intended...
"There was less trouble overnight in Clichy-sous-Bois itself - which [by the way, not that it means anything , were just saying] has a large immigrant and Muslim population -.." [As for who was rioting, who knows? Could have been anyone.]
Let 'em eat hummus.
Ah, there's the rub. Wrong choice of ammo. Studies have proven lead hollow points more effective.
"Communities that have the misfortune to be fragile" basically means communities of Muslims who will never assimilate into French society, who will not observe French law, will not even learn French and who will demand that everyone worship the pRophet or be skewered.
And still no pictures of the "youths" torching Paris. I wonder why?
Well see there you go. If they didn't have such a heavy police presence, they wouldn't have such a large Muslim population.
Quick, send in the UN.
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