Posted on 11/06/2005 10:19:10 AM PST by FairOpinion
PARIS - French President Jacques Chirac called a security meeting of his top ministers Sunday after urban rioting spread — with arsonists striking from the Mediterranean to the German border and into central Paris for the first time.
The meeting, planned for Sunday evening, came as Chirac faced mounting criticism from opposition politicians for not publicly speaking about the violence that has fanned out from Paris' tough northeastern suburbs.
The intensity and scope of the unrest overnight Saturday-Sunday was unprecedented since riots first erupted northeast of Paris on Oct.27. Arsonists burned 1,295 vehicles nationwide, including 35 within Paris itself — a sharp increase from the 897 incinerated the night before, said national police spokesman Patrick Hamon. Police made 349 arrests nationwide, he said.
"What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organized," arranging attacks through mobile phone text messages and learning how to make gasoline bombs, Hamon said.
Police found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a derelict building in Evry south of Paris, with more than 100 bottles ready to turned into bombs, another 50 already prepared, as well as stocks of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters' faces, senior Justice Ministry official Jean-Marie Huet told The Associated Press. Police arrested six youths, all under 18, he added.
The discovery Saturday night, he said, shows that gasoline bombs being used by rioters "are not being improvised by kids in their bathrooms."
Post offices, municipal buildings, provincial police stations and even nursery schools were targeted to the north, south, east and west of Paris. Police say copycat attacks are fanning the unrest, but there was no evidence that separate gangs were coordinating. Officials say older youths, many already known to police for previous crimes, appear to be teaching younger teens to make gasoline bombs and carry out attacks.
The unrest is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many immigrants 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 some 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.
Overnight attacks were reported in unlikely southern cities including the cultural bastion of Avignon and the resort cities of Nice and Cannes.
There were also attacks in or around the cities of Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Strasbourg and in the Normandy area.
The unrest took another alarming turn with car burnings inside the well-guarded French capital. Most of the vehicles torched were on the northern and southern edges of the city. But police said three cars were damaged by fire from gasoline bombs near the Place de la Republique neighborhood, or 3rd district, northeast of City Hall and near the historic Marais district.
"We were very afraid," said Annie Partouche, 55, who watched cars burning from her apartment in the 3rd district and said she lined her window ledges with wet towels to keep out dense smoke. "We were afraid to leave the building."
Before the latest incidents, some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security on what had been expected to be a restive Saturday night.
The violence began Oct. 27 in Clichy-sous-Bois, a low-income suburb northeast of Paris, 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.
Since then, the situation has calmed in Clichy-sous-Bois, where clashes between youths and police have stopped. But, anger and violence has heightened in new areas. In all, 3,300 buses, cars and other vehicles have been torched since the violence began, said Hamon, the police spokesman.
He said the town of Evreux, 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Paris, appeared hardest hit by marauding youths overnight Saturday-Sunday, with arsonists destroying at least 50 vehicles, shops and businesses, a post office and two schools.
Five Evreux police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with youths, Hamon said.
"Rioters attacked us with baseball bats," said Philippe Jofres, a deputy fire chief, told France-2 television. "We were attacked with pickaxes. It was war."
For a second night, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of youths combed the poor, heavily immigrant Seine-Saint-Denis region, northeast of Paris, where the violence began and has been concentrated.
Dozens of vehicles, two gymnasiums and at least three classrooms were set afire in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, outside Paris, local officials said.
Even nursery schools were not spared, with five classrooms of the Sleeping Beauty Nursery School in Grigny, in the Essonne region south of Paris, burned late Saturday along with two classrooms of another school, police said. It was at least the third school set ablaze in several days.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy — blamed for inflaming violence with tough talk and calling troublemakers "scum" — visited the hard-hit Essonne region early Sunday to "give police support," he said.
Chirac is such a loser! He's hiding...has he surrendered?
Have the "alienated youths" captured the Eiffel Tower yet?
Have the Parisian and expatriate elites fled the Al Fresco cafes? The world, John Kerry's grand globbal consensus bureau, is witnessing a French farce...well, another French farce among the many. C'est la guerre.
New information in this article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051106/wl_afp/franceriots_051106181914;_ylt=Am2pSGCzNBaBKSjcLyLTzeys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Damn! Don't it usually take them less time to surrender?
(Just askin')
| Les Français sont des singes de capitulation qui mangent du fromage.
|
I don't know what it was ... I'm in PA and saw it and it caught my attention .. spent the rest of the night looking for my tinfoil hat *L*
Not good .. Hope y'all are ok up there .. that was nasty weather
I am beginning to believe that "meetings" were originally invented by liberals to keep the rest of us from actually getting things done. ; )
Finally, a frog with balls...and good prescription glasses.
Dude, if these filthy towel heads touch one stone on that sacred ground, I would propose that we open up a can of whoop on 'em.
I'm assuming that it is protected by our military? With weapons?
My question for Chriac and anyone else who thinks war is not the solution to the problem of dealing with islamic terrorists- "What IS the solution?"
Money? If so, how much? How much money would have to be thrown to each and every ONE of them to get them to stop?
Is there an amount that would make them stop? That would be a never-ending blackhole.
Appeasement? Absolutely. Total appeasement leading to the establishment of Islam as the worlds ONLY religion.
I saw it clearly here in Texas but the star was on the back side of the crescent moon.
Muslims go by a lunar calendar. So I think Ramadan is from one crescent moon to the next. Got to look this up.
Check Stardate. It's a great site.
It did look like that.
I just suprized that the rioting muslims didn't sign 65 year leases in the fine French hotels of Paris proper like the Germans did.
10 days,and Chirac is just now calling a meeting? He must be getting advice From Blanco, Nagin and John Kerry.
The only solution, and it's by it's nature takes a long time, is exactly the policy President Bush is pursuing: Kill the terrorist element, help Democracy take hold, so the more peaceful Muslims will become more modernized, giving up the blood thirsty part of their religion. It has to be a multi-prongued strategy, but it does have to have one sharp prongue: war and destruction of the terrorist elements and those who support them.
Remember Germany and Japan in WW II, and look at them now.
They've already played the "Bush's Fault" card. Charic said he told Bush before the war this could happen. What a *ickhead charic is.
You know what the sad part is?
The French will give whatever the emirs demand of them.
They will no longer have a country if it keeps up. They will relinquish and sell out their citizens, just to keep from rocking the apple cart.
Thanks fo ping
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