Fri 4 Nov 2005
3:19pm (UK) French unrest enters second week Small, mobile groups of youths torched hundreds more cars near Paris, and the violence and arson attacks that have shaken the capital's suburbs for a week spread to other French towns. In the eastern city of Dijon, teens apparently angered by a police crackdown on drug trafficking in their neighbourhood set fire to five cars, said Paul Ronciere, the region's top government official. At a housing project in Salon-de-Provence, near the southern city of Marseille, nearly a dozen cars were burned, police said. Overnight in the the Paris region, at least 420 cars were torched, an increase from previous nights, the Interior Ministry said. It said five police officers were slightly injured by youths throwing stones or bottles. But unlike previous nights, there were few direct clashes with security forces, no live bullets fired at police, and far fewer large groups of rioters, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the worst-hit Seine-Saint-Denis suburb northeast of Paris. Instead, he 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. "The peak is now behind us," said Gerard Gaudron, mayor of Aulnay-sous-Bois, one of the worst-hit towns. He told France-Info radio that parents were determined to keep teenagers home to prevent unrest. "People have had enough. People are afraid. It's time for this to stop." The rioting started on October 27 with youths angered over the deaths of two teenagers - Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17 - electrocuted in a power sub-station where they hid, thinking police were chasing them. Traore's brother, Siyakah Traore, called for protesters to "calm down and stop ransacking everything." "This is not how we are going to have our voices heard," he said on RTL radio." © Copyright Press Association Ltd 2005, All Rights Reserved. This article: http://www.scotsman.com/?id=2195802005 Paris riots: http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1354 |