Posted on 11/07/2005 8:37:20 AM PST by HHKrepublican_2
PARIS - Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61-year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday. ADVERTISEMENT
As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the French government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the violence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm.
Meanwhile, governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in France.
On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes around the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started last month, national police chief Michel Gaudin told a news conference.
Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan advised their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the United States, Russia and at least a half dozen other countries in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit areas.
The victim was identified as Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, a retired auto industry worker who died after being beaten by an attacker. He was trying to extinguish a trash can fire Friday at his housing project in the northeastern suburb of Stains when an attacker caught him by surprise and beat him into a coma, police said.
Apparent copycat attacks spread outside France for the first time, with five cars torched outside Brussels' main train station, police in the Belgian capital 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 more than a decade.
Attacks overnight Sunday to Monday 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 had been injured by weapons' fire and there were signs that rioters were deliberately seeking out clashes with police, officials said.
Among the injured police, 10 were hurt 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 the injuries were not considered life-threatening. One was wounded in the neck, the other in the legs.
The unrest began Oct. 27 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.
About 4,700 cars have been burned in France since the rioting began and 1,200 suspects were 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 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.
President Jacques Chirac, whose government is under intense pressure to halt the violence, promised stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first public comments 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, that 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.
In Colombes in suburban Paris, youths pelted a bus with rocks, 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, whose reference to the troublemakers as "scum" appeared to inflame passions.
"Rioting", "Unrest"! Gee whiz, what does it take for the MSM to call things what they are. I could be wrong, but I don't believe that the Russian Revolution of 1917 "spread to 300 towns". It's a freaking war, an uprising, mon ami!
How'd we get video out of Tiananmen Square but we can't get a photo of this uprising out of democratic France?
Copycats.... in both Berlin and Brussels - 5 cars tourched at each site.... Hmmmm. Sounds organized to me.
>>Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight,
"America, help us! Send help!"
"Ooh, I'm SO sorry. Can't do it. Too busy. You know we'd
really like to, but..."
Why did the French plant trees along the Champs Elysees?
So the Nazis would have some nice shade as they marched in.
How long will it be until the insurgents who were headed for Iraq as reinforcements decide they can accomplish more in France?
The weaponry will be quickly upgraded..they better get a handle on this now!
All sorts of economic fall-out is coming just from what has happened so far.
Maybe because the MSM are too lily-livered to send in their own people?!
Maybe they should plan on declaring a curfew, too. That just might do the trick.
What if they're knowingly and intentionally doing it?
"The lights are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
This rings just as true today as it did in 1914, maybe even more.
I am technically incapable of posting this link using HTML. However, I offer it as a way for Freepers to check how blogosphere is getting news out despite MSMs attempts to control the agenda and the news. Its a way to chart who is talking about what. And as you can see the French riots are getting coverage.
Here: http://www.blogpulse.com/trend?query1=French+Riots&label1=Riots&query2=&label2=&query3=&label3=&days=30&x=46&y=12
"I always thought they'd need to be a bigger minority than they are before beginning the Euarabian Intafada."
They do. This is definitely a Phase I thing, and the Islamacist leaders are well aware of it.
I predict when these riots are over, things will become surprisingly calm. After little while, people will start concluding that things are not really as bad as they seemed during the riots.
The reason is this: the Islamacists now have extremely fertile ground for recruitment. What they need now from European governments is privacy. This is not a good time to have a spotlight shining on the Islamic communities. Some of the people that need to be moved into these communities at this point in time to recruit and organize in preparation for Phase II are people who need to keep a low profile with international law enforcement.
Anyhow, this is my prediction. We'll see if I'm right or wrong
Still waiting..
France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islamic Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that forbade all those "who seek divine grace from taking part in any action that blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others."
I guess the thugs above are exempt from the Fatwa 8as was intended!!!)
How the hell does the violence "SPREAD"? :-) What is it, an Avian Violence Flu?
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