Paris violence spreads Cars, warehouses, nursery school torched as unrest spreads across France
Jamey Keaten
Canadian Press
Saturday, November 05, 2005
CREDIT: (AP Photo/Francois Mori)
A firefighter tries to extinguish a raging fire of a warehouse in the Paris suburb, Le Bourget. [ Photo gallery]
AUBERVILLIERS, France -- Bands of youths torched more than 750 cars and burned warehouses and a nursery school in a ninth night of violence that spread from the restive Paris suburbs to towns around France, police said Saturday. Authorities appealed for calm in the face of an unprecedented streak of urban unrest in France. Troublemakers fired bullets into a vandalized bus, set a warehouse ablaze and burned 44 cars in a lot in Suresnes, just west of Paris. In a particularly malevolent turn, rioters stoned rescuers aiding someone who had fallen ill and torched the ambulance, police said. Incidents, mainly fires, were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the southwest, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere on the second night of unrest in areas beyond metropolitan Paris. An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole. "This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?" said Naima Mouis, 43, a hospital worker in Suresnes looking at the hulk of her burned-out car. An Interior Ministry operations centre tracking the destruction reported more than 750 vehicles burned around France. The figure - not definitive - marked a sharp rise from the more than 500 vehicles set ablaze 24 hours earlier. Arrests were up, to 203, the centre said. Officials in the Yvelines region west of Paris said at least 60 vehicles were torched and a nursery school was all but burned to the ground. Marches to call for calm were planned Saturday in several suburbs. The violence - sparked after the Oct. 27 accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis - has laid bare discontent simmering in France's poor suburbs ringing big cities. Those areas are home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair. A police officer at the operations centre said bullets were fired into a vandalized bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris. Two days ago, bullets were fired four times, signalling a potentially dangerous turn of events. The officer, not authorized to speak publicly, asked not to be named. The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade. An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence. The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set afire after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said. Late Friday in Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, the Interior Ministry officer said. Firefighters battled a furious blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris. "I'm not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out," said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq living near the warehouse. "I have three children and I live in a five-story building. If a fire hit, what would I do?" A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination between gangs in the various riot-hit suburbs. He said, however, that neighbourhood youths were communicating between themselves using mobile phone text messaging or e-mails to arrange meeting points and alert each other to police. More than 1,200 vehicles have been torched since the unrest began, LCI television reported. Vandals have also set fires to schools, post offices and other symbols of the state. - Associated Press writers Scheherezade Faramarzi, Cecile Brisson and Elaine Ganley in Paris and Thierry Boinet in Grenoble contributed to this report. © The Canadian Press 2005

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