Article from AFP:
France vows tougher security response as riots escalate06/11/2005 21h44
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/051106214454.2cv36kr1.html
PARIS (AFP) - President Jacques Chirac said restoring public order was his government's "absolute priority," even as the worst rioting France has seen in decades broke out for the eleventh straight night with shots fired at police.
"Those who want to sow violence of fear, they will be arrested, judged and punished," Chirac vowed.
He was speaking after chairing an emergency meeting of key ministers which, he said, "took a certain number of decisions to bolster the action of police and the courts, because today the absolute priority is restoring security and public order."
But there was no sign an end to the rampages that have occurred nightly since October 27, spreading out from Paris to most major cities around France..
Worse, the violence took on a more dangerous tone, with police coming under attack in several locations.
In Grigny, south of Paris, some 30 officers were hurt, two seriously, when assailants fired at them with buckshot, police said.
A car was also used as a battering ram against a police station in the Grand-Mare suburb in the western city of Rouen.
In the southern city of Toulouse, police had to fire tear gas grenades to push back a mob throwing stones and bottles.
"These individuals seem to be looking for contact with police, and they are attacking us, unlike during the other nights," a senior officer told AFP.
Arsonists also set fire to cars and trash cans in the cities of Nantes, Orleans and Rennes, and youths clashed with police in the southern city of Toulouse as the meeting was ending.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who attended the emergency meeting with Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and the ministers for defence, justice, the economy and education, said more police would be deployed wherever required.
There will be "a reinforcement of security forces anywhere in the country if it is necessary," he said.
"We will not accept any lawless zone."
The renewed violence, which has already raged on the outskirts of Paris and most of France's other major cities, and even in the heart of the capital itself, has gone on unabated despite the deployment of thousands of police.
More than 800 people have been arrested and 3,500 vehicles torched, mainly in the working-class, high-immigration suburbs of Paris that are at the centre of the troubles.
Most of those arrests and arson attacks occurred over the weekend. Fifty-one cars were destroyed or damaged in central Paris itself overnight Saturday, and 30 youths were arrested, many of them while they were preparing fire-bombs.
Unrest has now flared in up to 200 city suburbs and towns, including areas around Nice, Lille, Bordeaux and Montpellier, police said.
A police chief, Frederic Aureal, said his officers were encountering an unprecedented hostility from gangs, which he described as "prepared, structured, armed".
"We have come face-to-face with people who have attacked us with picks, petanque balls, many Molotov cocktails," he said.
Police overnight Saturday discovered a petrol-bomb factory south of the capital with 50 bottles ready for use. Ski masks were also found.
Firemen try to put out a burning car in a Toulouse neighbourhood
Police helicopters fitted with cameras and searchlights were being used to pursue youths who start fires then race away on scooters.
Officers were also breaking down doors in public housing estates to get offenders.
So far, no one has been killed in the unrest, which was sparked by the electrocution deaths of two teenagers who hid in an electrical sub-station in northeastern Paris to escape a police identity check.
But at least two people have been badly burnt by Molotov cocktails: a fireman, and a handicapped woman unable to get off an ambushed bus.
A 61-year-old was also in a coma after being hit by an assailant in a public housing estate, and a South Korean female TV reporter was kicked unconscious by assailants in a northern suburb on Saturday.
Youths, in interviews, have boasted that they were intensifying the violence because of a sort of "competition" between gangs from different suburbs to get media attention.
They have also expressed anger at Sarkozy, who described delinquents in the suburbs as "rabble" and vowed to clean up crime in the neighbourhoods "with a power-hose."
The United States, Britain, Canada and Russia have all warned their citizens against travelling through some of the worst-hit areas of Paris.