Posted on 11/05/2005 7:48:42 AM PST by Eurotwit
AUBERVILLIERS, France - Marauding youths torched nearly 900 vehicles, stoned paramedics and burned a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that spread from Paris suburbs to towns around France, police said Saturday. Authorities arrested more than 250 people overnight — a sweep unprecedented since the unrest began.
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For the first time, authorities used a helicopter to chase down youths armed with gasoline bombs who raced from arson attack to arson attack, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said.
The violence, which was concentrated in neighborhoods with large African and Muslim populations but has since spread, has forced France to address the simmering anger of its suburbs, where immigrants and their French-born children live on the margins of society.
With 897 vehicles destroyed by daybreak Saturday, it was the worst one-day toll since unrest broke out after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them. Five hundred cars were burned a night earlier.
In a particularly malevolent turn, youths in the eastern Paris suburb of Meaux prevented paramedics from evacuating a sick person from a housing project, pelting rescuers with rocks and torching the awaiting ambulance, an Interior Ministry official said.
A nursery school was badly burned in Acheres, west of Paris.
The town had previously escaped the violence, the worst rioting in at least a decade in France. Some residents demanded that the army be deployed, or that citizens band together to protect their neighborhoods. At the school gate, Mayor Alain Outreman tried to calm tempers.
"We are not going to start militias," he said. "You would have to be everywhere."
Unrest, mainly arson, was reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse in the southwest and in the Normandy city of Rouen. It was the second night that troubles spread beyond the difficult Paris suburbs.
In Suresnes, a normally calm town just west of the capital, 44 cars were burned in a lot.
On Saturday morning, more than 1,000 people took part in a silent march in one of the worst-hit suburbs, Aulnay-sous-Bois. One banner read: "No to violence."
Police detained 258 people overnight, almost all in the Paris region, and dozens of them will be prosecuted, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said after a government crisis meeting.
"Violence penalizes those who live in the toughest conditions," he said. "Violence is not the solution."
Most attacks have been in towns with low-income housing projects, areas marked by high unemployment, crime and despair. But in a new development, gangs have left their heavily policed neighborhoods to attack others with fewer police, spreading the violence.
Police deployed overnight in smaller, more mobile teams to chase rioters getting around in cars and on motorcycles, said Hamon, the police spokesman.
There appeared to be no coordination among gangs in different areas, Hamon said. Within gangs, however, youths communicated by cell phone text messages or e-mails and warned each other about police, he said.
Anger against police was fanned days ago when a tear gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois, north of Paris — the same surburb where the youths were electrocuted. Youths suspected a police operation, but Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met Saturday with the head of the Paris mosque and denied that police were to blame.
The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of the suburbs.
In Torcy, east of the capital, looters set fire to a youth center and a police station, which were gutted, city hall said. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris.
A police officer at the Interior Ministry operations center said bullets were fired into a vandalized bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris.
Firefighters battled a furious blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris.
"Are you serious?"
No. I was talking about Americans of
Korean descent. They kicked b-u-t-t-o-c-k-s
big time.
Islam, The Alleged Religion of Peace® ( TARP™ )? Click this picture:
No, I am not exaggerating. Click the pic, go to "last," and read backwards.
If you are not informed about this stuff, you will be made sick. If you are informed, you will be made mad, all over again.
Kindly note tagline...
One has to wonder when the people in charge finally admit that we are at war with Islam. The war against terrorism is a misleading and phony name. Name our enemy, Islam, not some faceless terrorist.
We will prevail, if we want to. You only need 10% of the population to care enough to be trained militarily and start getting rid of 'em. We need to shut off the supply of scum now, start sending the rest back and those that don't want to leave peacefully, well....
It's not like they're a highly trained group of terrorists or miliarists; the process will be messy and there will be collateral damage, but that's better than giving up. No one has ever said war was pretty, ever.
Yeah... I suppose there would be some tremendous logistical issues for forming a militia. Where do you find rifles for each prospective militia member? White flags aren't a problem; but, you need the guns so that the Frenchies can wave their flags properly.
Meanwhile.....waiting for DeGaulle to the rescue!
you said it brother....I take no shame in saying I am thouroughly enjoying this...let the fwench wallow in their appeasement as the moozies hand their asses to them..
PHuckfrance
Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and West Palm Beach got trashed by hurricane Wilma. Power is still out in many areas. No street lights at night, prime time for looting and riots.
Yet no looting or riots here (I live here)--wonder why?
Oh yeah, we have a well armed citizenry. Being necessary to a free state.
One 10-22 with multiple 30 rd mags can stop any riot in its tracks. Just one.
There really hasn't been any significant rioting in France since the 1970s. And I wouldn't even put this 9-day period into that group yet. If the police regain the streets by the middle of next week, and this grows...then I'd start to worry about the stability of the country. There are some towns, outside of Paris...where 10 percent of the population is Muslim and they could create alot of havoc. But other than burnt cars and buses...and a couple of assaults...it hasn't gone into 3rd gear. When you see these guys cutting power lines and setting fires to churches...then we go to the next big step.
As has been pointed out on FR, this situation is getting bigger and more violent, rather than petering out.
This is a very bad sutuation.
Perhaps Bush could send Senator Kerry and his lovely wife Tereza over there
to access the situation and offer a solution.
After all, he's so very French and a "take charge" kinda guy. [/sarcasm]
"in neighborhoods with large African and Muslim populations "
Go - figure...
This Nimrod definitely has dain bramage.
Yo!, frog-face, you gotta START somewhere!
Semper astonished
Where are the masses screaming, "Where is the government? What is their response taking so long?"
If I remeber correctly the reporters in the MSM were able to find the "screaming masses" pretty quickly after Katrina and they were demanding immediate action after 2-3 days. How long has this rioting in France been going on now? If I didn't know better I'd think the MSM has an agenda, but ,hey,I know better. /sarc/
So were they chasing them to identify them, arrest them, shoot them, WHAT? Or were they just chasing them just to see where they would go next so they could call in the fire squads more quickly?
They should be armed, forming militias and taking their country back!
They are probably wondering how this will effect their holiday time.
I've been curious about who was rioting 10 years ago and what those riots were about. I don't remember it and I can't find anything either.
(As he) surveyed a burnt-out police station at the estate entrance, (the Algerian father-of-six said), "The (police) station was only cosmetic anyway. The police have no power against the kids around here. My 14-year-old pulled a knife on me the other day. Do you think he's afraid of them?"
Bullets needed. Lead, not rubber.
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