Posted on 10/28/2006 6:41:35 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CLICHY-SOUS-BOIS, France - Marauding youths torched hundreds of vehicles overnight and on Saturday in renewed violence coinciding with the first anniversary of riots that exposed a deep schism between poor North African immigrants and mainstream France.
A group of teenagers set one bus on fire Saturday in the southern French port city of Marseille, seriously wounding a passenger. Three others suffered from smoke inhalation, police said. Two other public buses and 277 vehicles around the country were burned overnight, police said.
Six police were injured and 47 people were arrested, ministry officials said. Still the Interior Ministry described the night as "relative calm," noting that up to 100 cars are torched by youths in troubled neighborhoods on an average night.
Police had braced for a bigger replay of violence in the poor suburbs predominantly made up of Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the deaths of two teens that ignited three weeks of riots in 2005.
The rioting was fueled by anger at France's failure to offer equal opportunities to many minorities — especially Arabs and blacks — and France's 5 million-strong Muslim population.
France's trouble integrating minorities and the suburban unrest are becoming hot political issues in the campaign for next year's presidential and parliamentary elections. The government passed an equal opportunities law this spring and has poured funds into "sensitive" areas, but disenchantment is still pervasive.
The latest unrest centered on the troubled suburbs that ring Paris. Half the cars burned nationwide overnight were torched in the region around the capital. Of the 47 arrests, 33 people were taken into custody in the Paris suburbs, mostly for throwing projectiles, burning cars or generally vandalizing property, police said.
The national police said about 4,000 extra police and riot officers were deployed across the country to cope with a possible resurgence of violence. Some 7,000 police are at the ready on an average night in France, officials have said.
The bus attacks late Friday were not far from the site where the two teens were electrocuted in a power substation in Paris suburb Clichy-sous-Bois on Oct. 27, 2005. The two were hiding after what they thought was a police chase.
One bus was engulfed in flames at the foot of a high-rise housing project.
"Four guys attacked Bus 346," said witness Thierry Ange, 19. "They made everyone get off, then they hit a woman and dragged out the bus driver by his tie," then torched the bus with a gasoline bomb in a bottle, he said.
The blackened remains of another bus burned earlier stood across town. Two armed men had forced passengers off the bus, police said.
Youths also tried to burn a bus in Reims in eastern France, and attackers hurled metal balls at an empty bus in Trappes, west of Paris, the Interior Ministry said.
Scores of police, wielding shields and backed by a helicopter shining its searchlight, swept into a tough housing project in Montfermeil, a town near Clichy-sous-Bois, and several youths responded by throwing stones.
Paris' transport authority responded to the violence by curtailing bus services in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of the capital, which is home to thousands of immigrants and their French-born children.
___
Associated Press writers Jean-Marie Godard and Jean-Pierre Verges contributed to this report from Paris.
Firemen try to extinguish a bus set ablaze by two masked men in Le Blanc-Mesnil, northern Paris. Four thousand extra police were being drafted into restive French suburbs, police said, as a new armed attack on a bus near Paris was reported.(AFP/Jack Guez)
Tradition, it's what civiliation is all about.
Content is Void where prohibited by Sharia law.
civilization
Wascally Fwench yutes at it again...
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Azouz Begag, the French government minister for equal opportunities, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at his office in Paris, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2006. Begag is Muslim, of Algerian origin and born in a poor suburb of Lyon. Like other French citizens who suffer discrimination, he is angry. Azouz Begag says he is sometimes referred to as the French government's 'token Arab.'. Begag said he predicted 20 years ago the violence in France's suburban ghettos that exploded a year ago Friday into fiery riots. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
Wow- AP used the word "Muslim"! Guess Elaine Ganlet is going to get the style book thrown at her.
There go those darned Yoots again!
When are the French going to wake up and put out these brush fires before they engulf entire cities?
Is there still time for strong determined leadership? Perhaps, but time is running out.
Hmmmm, I wonder how many French political "leaders" have received bank transfers from the Middle East during the last two years? The French politicians sure have responded weakly to all the burning of vehicles.
French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, right, flanked by Labor Minister Jean-Louis Borloo, gestures during a press conference in this Sept. 1, 2005 file photo taken in Paris. Unemployment is still a major obstacle for French minorities a year after riots ravaged poor suburbs and exposed deep-rooted anger over racism and alienation that scar their communities. Borloo said in an interview with Associated Press Television News on Oct. 18, 2006 that discrimination is 'considerable,' especially against those of North African and African origin, as Villepin has made reducing joblessness a key priority of his government. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, file)
All this is the fault of us damn Jooooos. If we'd just let ourselves be butchered by the Palinazis instead of fighting them, the "yutes" would not be angry and riot.
/Typical French thinking.
the media blackout on this story is amazing.
I wonder how long it will be before the French ask the USA for assistance with these punks.
Damn Scotsmen at it again. Too much Glenmoran, I guess.
Is it that time of year already??
The media blackout about the brutality of the Iranian regime and Castro's regime is amazing too. We see 1000 stories about CIA "prisons" for every story about mass murder by the Iranian regime or Castro. The US msm is now thoroughly dishonest in the way it presents the world to the American people.
the media blackout on this story is amazing.
you got that right .. this has been slowly simmering for awhile and finally starting to boil yet little coverage-wise .. kind of like Harry Reid and his land dealings ..
Yuts will be yuts/s
Thats because they know if they ignore the problem, it will go away.
This is not being covered because it doesn't fit into liberal ideology and this story indirectly supports a tough policy against terrorism in the Middle East, which is the policy of President Bush. Therefore this story gets no coverage in the US.
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