French violence hits fresh peak (1,408 vehicles burned on Sunday night)

A night of rioting in France has left 1,408 vehicles burnt out and resulted in 395 arrests - the highest tolls yet in 11 nights of unrest.

Ten policemen were injured by shots and stones when they confronted 200 rioters in the Paris suburb of Grigny, with two policemen seriously hurt.

French media report that a man in a coma after an attack on Friday could be the first fatality of the unrest.

Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, was reportedly struck by a hooded man in the street after he and a neighbour went to inspect damage to bins near their apartment block in the town of Stains, in the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside Paris.

Muslim leaders of African and Arab communities have also issued a fatwa, or religious order, against the riots.

"It is strictly forbidden for any Muslim... to take part in any action that strikes blindly at private or public property or that could threaten the lives of others," the fatwa by the Union of Islamic Organisations in France said.

Hundreds of cars were set on fire in different towns on Sunday night, and police had to use tear gas to disperse a club-wielding mob in Toulouse.

Unrest has gripped areas with large African and Arab communities since the deaths of two youths in the rundown Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, who were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station after reportedly fleeing police.

Mr Sarkozy's oft-cited description of urban vandals as "rabble" (racaille) a few days before the riots began is said by many to have fuelled tensions.

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

Despite the controversy over Mr Sarkozy's remarks, a CSA opinion poll published in Le Parisien at the weekend showed him with a nationwide approval rating of 57%.

The two police officers were injured by gunfire in what police described as an "ambush" in Grigny late on Sunday.

France has been set ablaze by the embers of a racial resentment that the Villepin government has been incapable of extinguishing

Police chiefs said their men were being deliberately confronted by gangs apparently intent on fighting them.

"This is real, serious violence - not like the previous nights. I'm very worried because this is mounting."

In the southern city of Toulouse, police fired tear gas grenades to push back rioters and violent attacks were also reported in Marseille, Saint-Etienne and Lille.

Of the 1,408 vehicles burnt, 982 were attacked outside the Paris region as the "shock wave" from the Paris region reached the provinces, in the words of national police chief Michel Gaudin.

"The law must have the last word," Mr Chirac told reporters in his first public address on the violence on Sunday.

He promised arrest, trials and punishment for perpetrators but added that "respect for all, justice and equal opportunity," were needed to end the unrest.

Mr Chirac had faced criticism from opposition politicians for not speaking publicly about the unrest since it began on 27 October.

Daily Telegraph again, opinion piece this time:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/07/do0701.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/11/07/ixopinion.html

France divided as the flames creep ever closer to central Paris
By Colin Randall
(Filed: 07/11/2005)

After nine nights of rioting on the drab sink estates of suburban Paris, the spread of trouble to the fringes of the elegant city centre was perhaps the development France most dreaded. It would be false to suggest that the French have not been shocked by the daily images of burning cars and stone-throwing mobs. But while the violence was confined to ghettos that most of them would never dream of visiting, the comfortable Parisian elite could share with la France profonde a sense of eyebrow-raised detachment.

Setting fire to cars is, after all, what happens on a smaller scale all year round in the bleak, low-cost housing estates reassuringly located on the other side of the road that circles the capital. Now, however, the audacious threats of the hooded casseurs - that there was an appetite to maintain and extend the violence - are proving disturbingly accurate. Arsonists have not only crept distressingly close to Paris's grand boulevards; the celebrated tranquillity of Normandy and the glitz of the Riviera have also been menaced, with pockets of trouble reported from such towns as Evreux and Cannes as well, more predictably, as Lyons, Lille and Marseilles.

When the weather turned cold and wet after the first few nights, it seemed reasonable to hope that the trouble would die away. That is what often happened in poorer corners of 1980s Britain, when disturbances erupted on hot nights only to subside at the first sign of rain. In France, the trouble has endured and intensified to the extent that even a brief respite seems improbable in the short term. And there is little obvious sign that useful lessons can be drawn from the British experience.

The business of rioting has moved a long way from Broadwater Farm and Brixton to Aulnay-sous-Bois and Suresnes. There are certainly similarities, but also at least one key distinction. As a Daily Telegraph reporter covering the troubled estates of London, Bristol and Birmingham in the 1980s, I well remember the single-issue triggers to outbreaks of ferocious disorder. History, it seems, is being repeated in the country on which I now report for this newspaper.

Just as the Brixton and Broadwater Farm riots - overwhelmingly involving youths of West Indian origin - followed the death of one black woman and the shooting of another, the French disturbances were sparked by the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted while apparently hiding from police in an electricity sub-station.

After the British riots, an uneasy calm returned within a day or two. Resources were thrown at the disadvantaged communities, formal inquiries were commissioned and the actions of the police were placed under scrutiny in the courts and in Parliament. The black British rioters of that era, and the black or North African Arab French rioters of today, share feelings of disenchantment with the society into which their parents were once encouraged to settle. Young men from Tottenham or Toxteth considered themselves, often with reason, the victims of discrimination; the children of Algerian and sub-Saharan immigrants to France see the vaunted French qualities of liberté, égalité, fraternité as an illusion. They commonly speak of feeling not only un-French, but also unable to identify much more closely with the countries of their family's origins.

But - and this is the crucial difference between the different generations of rioters - most of those living in the French ghettoes are Muslims and have grown up during a period of Islamic radicalisation. Many of the youths hurling petrol bombs on Parisian estates look up to a slightly older group of mosque stalwarts. These men are capable of being forces for both good and mischief; there have been examples from the past fortnight of situations calmed, but also of attackers acting under their direction, so that Muslim-owned businesses, a halal butcher's shop and a kebab joint, for example, are spared, while a bank branch and symbols of another France are targeted.

Intelligence officials have already spoken of the involvement of the more sinister of such figures in the recruitment of young French Muslims to fight the American-led coalition in Iraq. Several have been killed, others are missing. The gravest fear for French ministers is that the trouble of the past 10 days has been orchestrated by Islamists bent on exploiting the grievances of impressionable youths. France's attempts to integrate its large Muslim population have failed; in the name of a secular state in which everyone, theoretically, is equal, there is not even a dependable estimate as to the true numbers - they are widely assumed to be as high as 10 per cent, or six million people, but the official census is not allowed to distinguish between ethnic groups.

If Margaret Thatcher's Britain somehow muddled through its crisis, a depressing question was springing to many French minds as 1,300 vehicles were set ablaze across the country on Saturday night alone. What can be done to end the rioting by a government seen by many as incompetent, divided and distracted by the competing presidential ambitions of its key figures, the prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, and the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy?

Mr de Villepin's handling of the current crisis has offered little reason for confidence; Mr Sarkozy's conduct, on the other hand, has been extraordinary. His condemnations of rioters as "scum" have robbed him of any support he will have gained among moderate Muslim opinion with earlier calls for reform of France's 100-year-old secular law to enable state funding for mosques.

Ever on the look-out for a pragmatic quick fix, the wily old political bruiser Jacques Chirac may well be wondering whether sacking Mr Sarkozy, his one-time protégé but in recent years his most deadly rival, would end the violence and boost his own lowly ratings in the polls.

Mr Chirac knows, however, that dismissal would not end his interior minister's surge towards the Elysée. Mr Sarkozy would retain his other crucial power base, as president of the ruling UMP party, and would continue to make exactly the sort of pronouncements that appal Messrs Chirac and de Villepin, but appeal to large segments of middle France.

As the government flounders, seemingly powerless to stem the bombardments of petrol bombs and stones, a snapshot of French opinion offers striking confirmation of just how divided the country is. Even as Paris burns, a new poll for the daily Le Parisien has found that while two thirds of the French feel that "Sarko" has a tendency to be too outspoken, a clear majority - 57 per cent - retains a positive view of him.

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