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# More violence hits immigrant suburbs of Paris ## Police, trains targeted in 8th night of rioting By Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times | November 4, 2005 PARIS -- Rioters fired at police, stoned commuter trains, and torched a school, shops, and hundreds of vehicles in tough immigrant suburbs yesterday, spurring authorities to deploy 1,000 riot police on an eighth night of street violence. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin held emergency meetings aimed at avoiding a crisis that the French have feared for years: large-scale disturbances in restive slums where youths of African and Arab descent feel rage against society. ''Order and justice will be the final word in our country," said Villepin, who met with Cabinet ministers and mayors from affected communities. ''The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priority, our absolute priority." But after dusk fell yesterday, new outbreaks took place in half a dozen communities in the heavily industrial, immigrant-dominated area north and northeast of Paris. Five police officers were injured by projectiles, and cars and buses were torched and vandalized, authorities reported. The violence seemed less intense than in the previous night, when hundreds of young men rampaged in 20 working-class communities that are a few miles north of the Paris city limits, but a world away from the capital's glittering buildings and tourist attractions. Police made more than 41 arrests early yesterday morning and last night; four officers and two firefighters were injured in the fighting. Shots were fired at police in four separate locations late Wednesday and early yesterday, but no one was hit, authorities said. Traffic was interrupted on a commuter rail line to Charles de Gaulle International Airport northeast of the city early yesterday after rioters hurled rocks at two trains. Disturbances are nothing new in the bleak housing projects on the urban periphery, where the two most powerful forces are drugs and Islamic activism. Even minor incidents pitting police against youths can set off attacks on cars and assaults on symbols of the state: postal workers, firefighters, day-care centers. But the current rioting has lasted longer than in the past, and has spread alarmingly, authorities say, because of accumulated frustration and tension and incitement by gangs trying to reassert control over turf. Although Islamic extremism is seen as a serious problem in some of the affected neighborhoods, there is no indication that fundamentalist leaders have encouraged the unrest, officials say. The main spark for the riots was set on Oct. 28 in the town of Clichy-sous-Bois when two teenagers died by electrocution while hiding from police in an electrical substation. One youth was of Tunisian descent; the other was born in Mauritania. The two were at a soccer game when police arrived; the teenagers reportedly fled to the fatal hiding place, though investigators say police were not chasing them. On the day the teenagers died, police in nearby Epinay arrested three men who allegedly beat a visiting photographer to death. The man worked for a lighting company and had stopped his car at a housing project to take pictures of light fixtures when he was assaulted in front of his family, police said. The incident contributed to generalized tension, the intelligence official said. So did a visit Oct. 26 to the gritty town of Argenteuil by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, part of the popular leader's campaign to take back poor areas with aggressive policing. A group of youths clashed with Sarkozy's entourage and threw objects at him, an incident instigated partly by known Islamic fundamentalists, the intelligence official said. The minister responded by calling the hecklers ''thugs." Because of that comment after the riots began, Sarkozy has found himself in the spotlight. Residents of affected areas have taken his words as an insult and a challenge. A youth in hard-hit Aulnay-sous-Bois told Le Monde this week: ''This is just the start. We aren't going to stop until Sarkozy resigns."

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