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November 4, 2005 | Friday | Shawwal 1, 1426
Enraged immigrants on the rampage in Paris PARIS, Nov 3: French authorities struggled on Thursday to bring order to rundown suburbs of Paris after a week of nighttime rioting that has spread across the region and called into question the government’s handling of the crisis. More than 1,000 police wielding shields and teargas grenades overnight battled stone- and bottle-throwing youths in at least nine suburbs, while cars went up in flames in 13 others to the north, east, west and south of Paris. Four gunshots were fired at riot squads, but missed their targets, according to police, who used rubber bullets when they felt threatened by advancing mobs. Nine people were injured in the fighting. In one northeastern suburb, Aulnay-sous-Bois, a police station was briefly taken over and ransacked by youths while a gymnasium and a Renault garage were set ablaze and a shopping centre vandalised. South of Paris, in Antony, two firebombs were thrown at a police station. All of the areas are high-immigrant zones dominated by depressing public housing estates, where crime and gangs run rampant. Well over 200 vehicles were torched — mostly in the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris but also in Yvelines to the west and Hauts-de-Seine to the south, according to police, who made more than a dozen arrests. A French television crew were forced by hooded youths to abandon their car, which was then set ablaze by a 40-strong mob. It was the seventh straight night of riots. As with the previous violence, calm returned before dawn, leaving a mess of burnt-out cars and smashed windows — and recriminations about the government’s law-and-order and social policies. The violence was sparked a week ago by the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who had hid in an electrical sub-station to escape a police identity check in the suburb at the epicentre of the troubles, Clichy-sous-Bois. Since then, rioters have defied tough police tactics implemented by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who vowed earlier this month to wage a “war without mercy” on youth crime in the downtrodden suburbs. President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday appealed for calm, warning that any further escalation would lead to “a dangerous situation.” Both Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Sarkozy cancelled overseas trips to tackle the growing threat to public order. Villepin held crisis talks on the unrest with a group of ministers and ruling party lawmakers Thursday morning, with more talks scheduled later in the day, but made no statement following the meeting. Lawmakers said afterwards that the government was united on how to tackle the unrest: by upholding the law but also by taking urgent steps to improve living conditions and social integration in these towns. Villepin has said he is counting on Sarkozy — whose open ambition to run for president in 2007 had been boosted by a decline in crime and delinquency on his watch — to “take the necessary measures” on law-and-order. In Clichy-sous-Bois, anger continued to run high over the death of the two youths, Bouna Traore, a 15-year-old of Malian background, and Zyed Benna, a 17-year-old of Tunisian origin, and over a police teargas grenade which hit a mosque during clashes Sunday night. Wednesday night saw the area’s streets calmer compared to other neighbourhoods, but youths said they planned to keep up their defiance. “We have found our thrills: playing with riot police in the evening,” said one 22-year-old who declined to give his name. “As long as the police come and provoke us in the evening, we’ll bring out the Molotov cocktails, stones, petanque balls, planks,” he said. According to official figures, France has 751 neighbourhoods classified as severely disadvantaged, housing a total of five million people, around eight percent of the country’s population. Conditions are often dire with grim high-rise housing, unemployment running at twice the national rate of 10 percent and a yearly per capita income of 10,500 euros (12,600 dollars), 40 percent less than the national average. —AFP |  |

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