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# France rioting grows in 2d week ## US warns tourists of violent areas By Jamey Keaten, Associated Press | November 5, 2005 AUBERVILLIERS, France -- Marauding youths set fire to cars and warehouses and pelted rescuers with rocks early today, as the worst rioting in a decade spread from Paris to other French cities. The United States warned Americans against taking trains to the airport via strife-torn areas. A savage assault on a bus passenger underscored the dangers of travel in Paris' impoverished outlying neighborhoods, where the violence has entered its second week. Attackers doused the woman, in her 50s and on crutches, with a flammable liquid and set her afire as she tried to get off a bus in the suburb of Sevran on Wednesday, judicial officials said. The bus stopped because of burning objects in its path. She was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns. Justice Minister Pascal Clement deplored the assault, saying it caused him ''great emotion." Rioters burned more than 500 vehicles yesterday as the unrest grew beyond the French capital for the first time. Unrest returned to the streets last night and early today, the ninth consecutive night of violence. Police said rioters fired bullets into a vandalized bus and burned 85 more cars in Paris and Suresnes, just to the west. In Meaux, east of Paris, officials said youths stoned rescuers aiding someone who had fallen ill. Meanwhile, warehouses in Suresnes and Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris, were set ablaze. Officials said other fires raged outside the capital in Lille, Toulouse, and Rouen, while an incendiary device was tossed at the wall outside a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris. About 30 mayors from the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the unrest started Oct. 27 met yesterday to make a joint call for calm. Claude Pernes, mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois, denounced a ''veritable guerrilla situation, urban insurrection" that has taken hold. A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no coordination among gangs in different areas. But he said youths in individual neighborhoods were communicating by cellphone text messages or e-mails, arranging meetings and warning one another about police operations. The violence started after the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, dominated by low-income housing projects. Since then, riots have swelled into a broader challenge against the French state and its security forces. The violence has exposed deep discontent in neighborhoods where African and Muslim immigrants and their French-born children are surrounded by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime, poor education, and housing. During the day yesterday, the burned remains of at least 520 cars littered Parisian streets, an increase from previous nights. Five police officers were lightly injured by youths throwing stones or bottles, the Interior Ministry said.

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