Posted on 11/04/2005 7:32:13 AM PST by Syco
Groups of youths hit Paris' riot-shaken suburbs with waves of arson attacks, torching hundreds of cars, as unrest entered its second week Friday and spread to other towns in France.
In the eastern city of Dijon, teens apparently angered by a police crackdown on drug trafficking in their neighborhood set fire to five cars, said Paul Ronciere, the region's top government official.
Overnight in the Paris region, 420 cars were set ablaze, up from previous nights, the Interior Ministry said... The unrest was led by "very numerous small and highly mobile groups," with arson attacks that destroyed 187 vehicles and five buildings, including three sprawling warehouses.
Car torchings are a daily fact of life in France's tough suburbs, with thousands burned each month, police say. Police intelligence has recorded nearly 70,000 incidents of urban violence this year, including attacks on police and rescue services, arson, throwing projectiles, clashes between gangs, joy-riding and property destruction, Le Monde reported.
Many of the riotous youths are the French-born children of immigrant parents. The unrest has laid bare discontent simmering in suburbs and among immigrant families who feel trapped by poverty, unemployment, and poor education.
Youths fired buckshot at riot police vehicles in Neuilly-sur-Marne, east of Paris, and a group of 30 to 40 harassed police near a synagogue in Stains to the north where a city bus was torched and a school classroom partially burned, Cordet said.
In Trappes, to the west, 27 buses were incinerated. But the unrest was scaled back from the sometimes-ferocious rioting of previous nights, when bullets were fired at police and firefighters without causing injuries.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Good post. I like the comparison to the Rodney King riots. I hate it, but it is a great way for the MSM to spin this. So good that it could work.
Remember the Klintoon would not allow the Serbs to take care of business in the Balkans, so, now they have the Balkans coming to western Europe.
I must confess to being guilty of schadenfraude over this.
The toothpaste was out of the tube years ago. It will be near impossible to get it back in.
Oh Jeeze! If forgot all about that. Do you think Al Gore could help put the fires out?
Ditto, the smug 8astards are now simply getting their just deserts.
Maybe the French gvt should offer to send all those poor, oppressed, unembraced people back to their homelands for free! The thinking being that since things are no better in France (they are, for most), then go back home and have a better life!
NONE of them would go, I'd wager.
Fox has covered it and so has the BBC. The BBC has graphic tape and Fox says that it is Muslims rioting.
Small wonder the price of oil is falling, by burning thousands of cars, the muslimes are the heros.
French gov't powerless as worsening riots spread from Paris
04/11/2005 14h37PARIS (AFP) - Gangs of youths again stoned police and set cars ablaze as France's worst rioting in more than a decade raged for its eighth straight night, sparking fears that racial and social divisions were fuelling growing violence.
In a worrying sign, the rampages that have gripped the poorer immigrant-populated outskirts of Paris since October 27 spread, for the first time, to other parts of the country, to Dijon, Marseille and Normandy, and inside the capital itself.
They have also taken on an increasingly dangerous tone, with buckshot fired at riot squad vans -- and prosecutors revealing that a handicapped woman was deliberately set on fire the night before.
According to prosecutors Friday, the 56-year-old woman was unable to get off a bus targeted by a Molotov cocktail late Wednesday in the northern Paris suburb of Sevran. She was allegedly doused with petrol by one youth, then others threw a flaming rag on her. Rescued by the driver, she was taken to hospital with severe burns to 20 percent of her body.
A fireman was also being treated for burns to his face received from a Molotov cocktail thrown earlier in the week.
Overnight Thursday, more than 500 vehicles and several businesses were set on fire, and 78 people arrested in the Paris area, according to police.
Most of the arson happened in the low-income neighbourhoods that lie well outside the city, far from its famous monuments and tourist sights, although seven cars were also burnt in poorer northern and eastern districts in central Paris.
The violence has badly rattled the government of President Jacques Chirac, which is wavering between the "zero tolerance" policies of the hardline Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and calls for a more conciliatory approach to take account of the rioters' grievances.
More than 1,300 police were deployed in a vain attempt to restore order around the city, following a vow from Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin that "I will not allow organised gangs to make the law in the suburbs."
Marine Le Pen, daughter of extreme-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and deputy leader of his National Front party, called for a state of emergency to be declared in the worst-hit areas.
The rioting -- sparked last week by the accidental deaths by electrocution of two youths who hid in an electrical sub-station in the northeast neighbourhood of Clichy-sous-Bois to escape a police identity check -- is the worst France has seen since the first troubles broke out in deprived high-immigration neighbourhoods in the late 1980s.
Those responsible are groups of young Muslim men, the sons of families from France's former Arab and African colonial territories, who have said in interviews that they are protesting economic misery, racial discrimination and provocative policing.
Arsonists set fire to five businesses in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north and east of Paris city centre, completely destroying a large warehouse containing carpets and flooring material at the Garonord industrial zone near Charles de Gaulle airport.
At Trappes to the southwest of Paris a spectacular fire gutted a bus depot, with 27 vehicles inside destroyed. Witnesses told Europe 1 radio that flames shot 50 meters (150 feet) into the air with repeated explosions.
Five officers were lightly hurt by flying objects as rioters once again stoned police and fire services in several neighbourhoods, and at Neuilly-sur-Marne to the east of Paris buckshot was fired at vans belonging to the CRS riot squad.
Police said that though the number of car-burnings was higher than the previous night, clashes with rioters were fewer.
Speaking on French television late Thursday, Sarkozy said the violence was being orchestrated by unknown organisers. "What we have been witnessing ... has nothing spontaneous about it. It was perfectly organised. We are trying to find out by who and how," he said.
The minister -- who has ambitions to become president after elections in 2007 -- also rejected accusations that his tough rhetoric had fuelled the rioters' anger. He has described delinquent suburban youth as "racaille" or rabble, and said crime-ridden areas need to be "cleaned with a power-hose."
Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe of the opposition Socialist Party warned on Europe 1 against hasty conclusions being made "between one religion, Islam, and a few extremists" and the range of criminal networks in the down-trodden suburbs.
Small-scale suburban violence is a regular but unreported fact of life in many poor areas on the outskirts of major French cities. According to the police intelligence service, a total of 28,000 cars were burned across the country this year -- even before the latest outbreak.
They have also taken on an increasingly dangerous tone, with buckshot fired at riot squad vans -- and prosecutors revealing that a handicapped woman was deliberately set on fire the night before.
According to prosecutors Friday, the 56-year-old woman was unable to get off a bus targeted by a Molotov cocktail late Wednesday in the northern Paris suburb of Sevran. She was allegedly doused with petrol by one youth, then others threw a flaming rag on her. Rescued by the driver, she was taken to hospital with severe burns to 20 percent of her body.
Ugly hardly describes that event.
"Car torchings........with thousands burned EACH month, police say."
This is unbelievable. Don't believe these people have too little, but too much....just like Iraq has enough cars to blow up. I'd say ban all cars. Maybe when they get tired of walking, they might appreciate cars....or at least get bright enough to set up a few chop shops. These are nihilists, plain and simple.
The article makes it sound like it's drug dealers doing the rioting. I thought it was muslims?
Plagarizing myself from previously re: assimilation-
When my grandparents came here in the '20's, they were ghettoized. I know that for a fact because I remember the neighborhood where they lived till I was in my early teens. However, they were so glad to have been given a place here that they assimilated as much has was needed. Some assimilated more and sooner than others, but all assimilated enough to work and take care of themselves...by the way, NO social legislation was in place for anyone who fell through the cracks. You would sink or swim on your own efforts and merits. They even looked down on their own who failed to take advantage of what they regarded as golden and abundant opportunities here. It worked, all moved away from their first circumstances and attained conditions much better. This in one generation or so. I think if the second world war did not intervene, many would have succeeded sooner, my father for certain. But he saw his duty and went. Also, when he returned home, and like his own father he took a job in a steel mill in the filthiest and most dangerous conditions you can think of, but he got out of where he started and so did his parents, with the help of the children. So our father took care of us and took care of his parents and siblings as well. This after playing craps with his life in Europe against the 'other' Nazis. All of civilization stares these murdering terrorists in the face as an indelible lesson and they STILL don't get it!!!
"If this spreads into non-Muslim areas the French should start picking off these animals from their windows!
"
With spit-wads?
Elsewhere on FR it was posted that the French media will be cutting back reporting so they don't "inflame" the situation (that's what they said).
Looks like it will keep spreading to other towns until the authorities actually do something and get tough but maybe de Villepin is too busy writing a poem about it.
When we hear the word "YOUTS" we know the youts are brutes.
Were there ever any?
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