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.
"The poor boys were just innocently scaling the wall of an electric relay station and they were killed. It's just not right that they had all that dangerous electricity there just waiting to harm anyone who happened to touch that transformer with a wall around it. It had to be a trap to kill innocent Muslims, who should be free to do whatever we want since we own this and all land."
Let'em eat Soylent Green.
In the words of another terrorist many years ago, "Is Paris burning?"
there was more trouble last night as well...it continues..just heard it on the news here...
Or wondering.
You'd think the body odor of the average Frenchman would be enough to put down a whole gang of rioters. Viva Le Appeasement!
C'est intolerable! Comments'attendent-ils a ce que nous se rendent dans des conditions comme ceci?
C'est intolerable! Comment s'attendent-ils a ce que nous se rendent dans des conditions comme ceci?
So before it's over, do you think they'll call in a Corsican to maintain order in the streets?
ping
You forgot the part about demanding welfare from the state because they are unemployable, or refuse to even try to find work.
Or Trinity. >;)
Soylent green is peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeopulllllllllllllll!
LOL
When will France actually deal with Muslims? When they torch the Louvre? Blow up the Eiffel Tower? They've ignored multiple rapes and beatings of Christian girls. A few murders, so what. Now rioting seems to have aroused a collective yawn. Will they be like the Dutch? (Those rich enough are leaving Holland asap.)
If you read the article carefully, you see that violence and 'unrest' took place among several departments around Paris. If Muslims actually organize behind one or two lunatic warmonger mullahs they'd paralyze France.
Or maybe two.... c]p-{>
Don't forget Charles Martel, at Tours he put an end to this nonsense.
Hopefully, somewhere in France, the blood of Martel still flows in someones' veins.
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