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.

Man Becomes First Killed in French Rioting

PARIS - A man who was beaten by an attacker while trying to extinguish a trash can fire during riots north of Paris has died of his injuries, becoming the first fatality since the urban unrest started 11 days ago, a police official said Monday. Youths overnight injured three dozen officers and burned more than 1,400 vehicles.

Apparent copycat attacks spread to other European cities for the first time, with five cars torched outside Brussels' main train station, police in the Belgian capital said.

Australia, Austria and Britain became the latest countries to advise their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the United States and Russia in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit areas.

Alain Rahmouni, a national police spokesman, said the man who was beaten died at a hospital from injuries sustained in the attack, but he had no immediate details about the victim's age or his attacker.

The man was caught by surprise by an attacker after rushing out of his apartment building to put out the fire, Rahmouni said.

Clashes around France left 36 police injured, and vandals burned 1,408 vehicles overnight Sunday-Monday, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since the rioting started Oct. 27, national police chief Michel Gaudin said.

The mayhem started as an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing projects and has fanned out nationwide among disaffected youths, mostly of Muslim or African origin, to become France's worst civil unrest in over a decade.

Attacks overnight were reported in 274 towns and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said.

"This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, shows up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said, noting that the violence appeared to be sliding away from its flash point in the Parisian suburbs and worsening elsewhere.

It was the first time police were injured by weapons fire amid signs that rioters were deliberately seeking out clashes with police, officials said.

Among the injured police, 10 were injured by youths firing fine-grain birdshot in a late night clash in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Two were hospitalized but their lives were not in danger. One was wounded in the neck, the other in the legs.

The unrest began in the low-income Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, 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.

There have been 4,700 cars burned in France since the rioting began, and 1,200 suspects have been detained at least temporarily, Gaudin said.

The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans 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.

Meanwhile, the government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm.President Jacques Chirac promised stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first public address Sunday since the riots started.

"The law must have the last word," Chirac said after a security meeting with top ministers. France is determined "to be stronger than those who want to sow violence or fear, and they will be arrested, judged and punished."

France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree. It forbade all those "who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others."

Arsonists burned two schools and a bus in the central city of Saint-Etienne and its suburbs, and two people were injured in the bus attack. Churches were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete, he said. The extent of damage was not immediately clear.

In Colombes in suburban Paris, youths pelted rocks at a bus, sending a 13-month-old child to the hospital with a head injury, Hamon said, while a daycare center was burned in Saint-Maurice, another Paris suburb.

Much of the youths' anger has focused on law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who inflamed passions by referring to troublemakers as "scum."

In Strasbourg, youths stole a car and rammed it into a housing project, setting the vehicle and the building on fire.

"We'll stop when Sarkozy steps down," said the defiant 17-year-old driver of the car, who gave his name only as Murat. Under arrest, he and several others awaited a ride to the police station as smoke poured from the windows of the housing project behind them.

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Associated Press writers Emmanuel Georges-Picot in Paris, Thierry Boinet in Grenoble and Jan Sliva in Strasbourg contributed to this report.

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