Posted on 10/05/2007 10:34:44 AM PDT by Republicain
Saint-Dizier, France - French police clashed overnight with youths who went on a rampage in a town in eastern France, prompting Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie to travel to the trouble spot.
Between 40 and 50 masked youths used metal bars to smash a firefighters' vehicle and a police car dispatched to a shopping mall in Saint-Dizier, said Yves Guillot, the head of the Haute-Marne regional government.
The youths then fanned out across the town of 30 000 inhabitants, setting fire to two buildings, a car rental office and 16 vehicles. Police reinforcements were sent in to quell the violence.
"We are trying to understand what happened. We have had clashes in our town but not on this scale," said Mayor Francois Cornut-Gentille.
The youths are said to be residents of Saint-Dizier's low-income housing project, Vert-bois, which is home to 12 000 people.
Alliot-Marie was due to travel to Saint-Dizier, some 200km east of Paris, after police and fire emergency authorities were targeted in the violence, her office said.
Hundreds of suburbs across France exploded into rioting for three weeks in late 2005, highlighting the nation's failure to integrate its Arab and African immigrants.
Once again, their ethnicity is being withheld.
Could they be mooslims?
Ha ha. I think we all have a pretty good idea of what is going on here.
“Youths”, eh? Sigh. Those darned Jooooos/Christians/etc.
Don’t you think it’s interesting how death and destruction seems to happen wherever Muslims gather.
More “angry youths”. I guess it just goes to show that France is a racist, sexist, homophobic society with not enough socialism....
We’ll see how Sarko deals with France’s “youth” problem.
They are just young despondent mimes upset about the passing of Marcel Marceau.
Those darn Mormon “youth” again....
it’s those MUSLIM “Youts” again
From Stratfor:
France: New Violence Bears a Foreboding Message
October 05, 2007 14 36 GMT
Roughly 40-50 masked youths attacked a police-escorted firefighting team en route to a fire in the largely Muslim-populated French town of Saint-Dizier in the early hours of Oct. 5.
For now, the event does not appear to herald a replay of the race riots that rocked France in 2005, when the alleged accidental electrocution of three Muslim youths fleeing local police sparked violence on a national scale. This time around, there seems to be no precipitating event, suggesting that the violence will not again expand nationally in short order.
But the spontaneous nature of the violence suggests that French suburbs — where the 10 percent of France’s population that is Muslim is concentrated — are beginning to develop characteristics similar to those found in Watts, Calif., in the United States in 1965. In Watts, the local minority — blacks — felt so dispossessed that violence was seen as one of the few means of impacting political discourse.
"Deranged followers of Mad Mo the genocidal caravan-raider" seems more likely.
Isn’t it too late in the season for this? I thought early spring into the summer was the proper time to burn buildings and cars.
If only Miss manners was French, she could keep these people from embarrasing themselves... I mean really, a car fire in October?
It was bound to happen.
I don’t like to tell other countries how to handle their internal affairs, so I’ll just politely suggest that if Sarko gives them a “whiff of the grape” ... I won’t accuse him of human rights violations.
I'd bet it was fanatical Amish extremists. :=)
So I wonder how many of these guys were named Jacques, Pierre, Francois and Georges? And how many were named Mohammed, Ahmed, Marwan and Waleed?
I am sure it is a coincidence that this happened on the same day as one of the biggest events in the Moose-Limb calender -— Al Quds Day.
Incidently, this “holiday” was started by the crazy Iranians after the Ayatollah Kooka-mania took over in ‘79.
If they're masked how do they know they are youths?
And what is a "youth"? Under 18? Under 30?
Is their "youth"-ness supposed to make us sympathetic?
I hope Sarkozy gets on top of this pronto.
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