Posted on 11/04/2005 12:32:54 AM PST by Southack
PARIS RIOTS SPREADING 4.11.2005. 18:34:50
Rioting around Paris has worsened with gangs attacking police and firefighters in defiance of a government vow to crackdown on the violence, which has plagued the capital for over a week.
Fresh rioting broke out on the outskirts of Paris in the city's poorest and mainly immigrant suburbs for the eighth straight night on Thursday.
Around 1,300 police officers were mobilised in the north-eastern suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, while more than 30 people were arrested in the area.
Buses, fire engines and police were stoned and five policemen were reported injured.
Police said more than 160 cars were torched overnight in the Paris region and 33 in the provinces, a day after around 315 vehicles were burnt in the citys Ile-de-France region.
One of the worst incidents took place at Neuilly-sur-Marne where police vans came under fire from pellet pistols, but nobody was reported hurt.
A fire was started in a primary school in Stains, as police were targeted by a group of 30 to 40 people near a synagogue.
Paris firemen were called to fight a blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aulnay-sous-Bois in Seine-Saint-Denis.
Traffic was halted on a suburban commuter line which links Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains.
The clashes have gained territory every night since they began last Thursday, exposing what critics say is a failure of the government to address the problems of low-income, high-immigration suburbs where crime and gangs run rampant.
In a worrying sign similar rampages broke out elsewhere in France.
Police said several cars in the eastern city of Dijon were set alight, while similar attacks took place in the western Seine-Maritime region and the Bouches-du-Rhone in the south of the country.
Government defiant
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who cancelled a trip to Canada to tackle the crisis, said the violence was "unacceptable".
He vowed that authorities would not give in to the violence and would make restoring order their "absolute top priority".
"I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs," he said.
President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday called for calm, warning that an escalation would be "dangerous".
The riots were sparked last week by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who had hidden in an electrical sub-station to escape a police identity check in Clichy-sous-Bois.
A preliminary report released by the interior ministry on Thursday appeared to exonerate police of any direct role in the teenagers' deaths.
But as the unrest continued the opposition Socialist Party and many in the suburbs themselves blamed the hardline policies of Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy for fanning the violence.
Mr Sarkozy, who on Thursday said the total number of people arrested was over 140, vowed a "war without mercy" on crime and rebellious youths in the suburbs just before the rampages erupted.
The conservative minister, who has ambitions of running for president in two years, has drawn criticism for his tough rhetoric, especially for referring to delinquents as "rabble".
On Thursday, he claimed that recent rioting "was not spontaneous, it was perfectly organised we are looking into by whom and how."
Low income suburbs
France has 751 neighbourhoods officially classed as severely disadvantaged, housing a total of five million people, around eight percent of the population.
The recent violence has exposed simmering discontent in those suburbs where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime and poor education and housing.
Unemployment is these areas is often twice the national rate of 10 percent, and per capita incomes 40 percent below the national average.
Thursday night was the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a night traditionally marked by feasts and family get-togethers.
QUAGMIRE!
Someone once said that he/she loved everything French. However, the writer said he could never understand France's use of : 1. The Guillotine, 2. The French Foreign Legion, & 3.Devils Island.
Perhaps a reestablishment is timely.
I was just thinking the same thing.
Links please !!!
Well said.
This is beyond civilian police control. The French should have called out their military days ago and done this.
But they, like us, are prisoners of our own foolish rhetoric, equating this vicious international cult with real religions.
Rest assured we are next, as soon as the islamic population here reaches a critical mass.
Of course add this to the muslim-only public pool time they have gained in Seattle and the calls to prayer in Hamtra..whatever that place in Michigan is...
I say we take off and nuke the whole site from orbit. Only way to be sure...
The Islamfascists are simply a tool of the left against Christianity and Judiasm. Once the religious faithful are destroyed there are no moral barriers against full implementation of the evils of Socialism and Communism. They they can put the Islamofascists in Gulags and releasae those who are willing to serve them on other fronts.
Roust 'em!
I believe you but I think this time, they may have bitten off more than they can chew. The islamists will murder every socialist/communist they can get their hands on.
This sort of happened in Iran. The communist/socialists use the radical islamists to get rid of the moderates and those who really wanted a more enlightened govt, then the islamists started killing the commie/socialists as fast as they could.
Only here could they survive.
Islamists make poor political bedfellows.
Looks like war to me. When are the French going to get it?
You could probably disguise things better if you learned how to use your shift key.
What a shame the french are such wussies !
"They should lock and load live rounds and kill as many as possible . Deport the survivors and their entire families...."
You're aware that this story is about France, right?
"I wonder if Chirac is now finally figuring out that Iran is truly part of the axis of evil."
Iran...and France...
"Looks like war to me. When are the French going to get it?"
Don't use that "war" word, or million's of white flags will be popping out of windows all over France.
"QUAGMIRE!"
Hilarious!
This "disadvantaged" excuse is just a ruse by the msm. In England, these vermin were collecting up to $80,000/yr. in welfare benefits, and what the Blair government got in return was 55 dead Englishmen in the bus bombings. This is not about economics. It's about militant Muslim jihad. But to the Left, the only thing to fear in this world is Christians. Weird.
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