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French violence hits fresh peak
A night of rioting in France has left 1,408 vehicles burnt out and resulted in 395 arrests - the highest tolls yet in 11 nights of unrest.
Ten policemen were injured by shots and stones when they confronted 200 rioters in the Paris suburb of Grigny, with two policemen seriously hurt.
President Jacques Chirac has said restoring order is his top priority.
Meanwhile a man who fell into a coma after being beaten last week is thought to be the first fatality of the unrest.
Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, was reportedly struck by a hooded man in the street after he and a neighbour went to inspect damage to bins near their apartment block in the town of Stains, in the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside Paris.
His widow has been received by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Appeal to Muslims
Muslim leaders of African and Arab communities have also issued a fatwa, or religious order, against the riots.
"It is strictly forbidden for any Muslim... to take part in any action that strikes blindly at private or public property or that could threaten the lives of others," the fatwa by the Union of Islamic Organisations in France said.
Hundreds of cars were set on fire in different towns on Sunday night, and police had to use tear gas to disperse a club-wielding mob in Toulouse.
Unrest has gripped areas with large African and Arab communities since the deaths of two youths in the rundown Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, who were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station after reportedly fleeing police.
Mr Sarkozy's oft-cited description of urban vandals as "rabble" (racaille) a few days before the riots began is said by many to have fuelled tensions.
Reports of a police tear gas grenade hitting a mosque during the riots further inflamed feelings.
Despite the controversy over Mr Sarkozy's remarks, a CSA opinion poll published in Le Parisien at the weekend showed him with a nationwide approval rating of 57%.
Police under attack
The two police officers were injured by gunfire in what police described as an "ambush" in Grigny late on Sunday.
They were taken to hospital with wounds to the leg and throat.
Police chiefs said their men were being deliberately confronted by gangs apparently intent on fighting them.
"They really shot at officers, said local police commander Bernard Franio.
"This is real, serious violence - not like the previous nights. I'm very worried because this is mounting."
In the southern city of Toulouse, police fired tear gas grenades to push back rioters and violent attacks were also reported in Marseille, Saint-Etienne and Lille.
Of the 1,408 vehicles burnt, 982 were attacked outside the Paris region as the "shock wave" from the Paris region reached the provinces, in the words of national police chief Michel Gaudin.
"The law must have the last word," Mr Chirac told reporters in his first public address on the violence on Sunday.
He promised arrest, trials and punishment for perpetrators but added that "respect for all, justice and equal opportunity," were needed to end the unrest.
Mr Chirac had faced criticism from opposition politicians for not speaking publicly about the unrest since it began on 27 October.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4413250.stm
President Jacques Chirac has said restoring order is his top priority.
Meanwhile a man who fell into a coma after being beaten last week is thought to be the first fatality of the unrest.
Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, 61, was reportedly struck by a hooded man in the street after he and a neighbour went to inspect damage to bins near their apartment block in the town of Stains, in the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside Paris.
His widow has been received by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Appeal to Muslims
Muslim leaders of African and Arab communities have also issued a fatwa, or religious order, against the riots.
"It is strictly forbidden for any Muslim... to take part in any action that strikes blindly at private or public property or that could threaten the lives of others," the fatwa by the Union of Islamic Organisations in France said.
Hundreds of cars were set on fire in different towns on Sunday night, and police had to use tear gas to disperse a club-wielding mob in Toulouse.
Unrest has gripped areas with large African and Arab communities since the deaths of two youths in the rundown Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, who were accidentally electrocuted at an electricity sub-station after reportedly fleeing police.
Mr Sarkozy's oft-cited description of urban vandals as "rabble" (racaille) a few days before the riots began is said by many to have fuelled tensions.
Reports of a police tear gas grenade hitting a mosque during the riots further inflamed feelings.
Despite the controversy over Mr Sarkozy's remarks, a CSA opinion poll published in Le Parisien at the weekend showed him with a nationwide approval rating of 57%.
Police under attack
The two police officers were injured by gunfire in what police described as an "ambush" in Grigny late on Sunday.
They were taken to hospital with wounds to the leg and throat.
Police chiefs said their men were being deliberately confronted by gangs apparently intent on fighting them.
"They really shot at officers, said local police commander Bernard Franio.
"This is real, serious violence - not like the previous nights. I'm very worried because this is mounting."
In the southern city of Toulouse, police fired tear gas grenades to push back rioters and violent attacks were also reported in Marseille, Saint-Etienne and Lille.
Of the 1,408 vehicles burnt, 982 were attacked outside the Paris region as the "shock wave" from the Paris region reached the provinces, in the words of national police chief Michel Gaudin.
"The law must have the last word," Mr Chirac told reporters in his first public address on the violence on Sunday.
He promised arrest, trials and punishment for perpetrators but added that "respect for all, justice and equal opportunity," were needed to end the unrest.
Mr Chirac had faced criticism from opposition politicians for not speaking publicly about the unrest since it began on 27 October.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4413250.stm
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It was to be predicted that the violence in the French suburbs would continue throughout the weekend.
But if the number of car-burnings remains in the high hundreds over the next few nights, then France will have entered a new and dangerous phase.
No longer will it be possible to argue that the violence is the extended fallout from the 27 October incident - the accidental electrocution of two youths in Clichy-sous-Bois.
'Intifada'
Once the two-week mark approaches, the events will start resembling the large-scale suburban uprising that doom-mongers have predicted for years.
Words like "intifada" will start being bandied around, and the stakes will suddenly be much higher.
There are two solid reasons for pessimism. The first is the way the rioters have seized on Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as their elemental hate-figure.
To hear the words of the protesters, and indeed much of the reporting of the violence, one can sometimes get the impression that Mr Sarkozy actually created the unrest.
In fact his rhetoric, while undoubtedly uncompromising and hardline, has been wilfully misinterpreted, and not just by the rioters.
To describe the bands of youths rampaging through the suburbs as "yobs" or "rabble" - which he did - is not quite the same as describing all inhabitants of the suburbs as "scum", which is how it has sometimes come across in the media.
Nonetheless, legitimately or otherwise, the minister is now seen by many inhabitants of the suburbs - as well as the left-wing opposition - as part of the problem.
But if they believe there is the remotest chance of his standing down, then they are mistaken.
After initial doubts, Mr Sarkozy now has the backing of the rest of the government, and the longer the riots go on, the more he appears justified in his firm line. He will remain as the rioters' hate figure for some time yet.
Universal response
The other reason for pessimism is that the rioters can read in much of the reaction to their rampages a legitimisation of what they have done.
The universal press response - both national and international, left and right - has been to point out how the French model of integration has failed, and how the suburbs have become exploding cauldrons.
From every direction come calls for a new assessment, but some calls are stronger than others.
An editorialist in Le Monde, for example compared the riots to May 1968, and expressed the hope that just as the student uprising forced a major - and in the writer's view - positive change to French society, so will these. That is not exactly an encouragement for the violence to cease.
As for reasons for optimism, are there any?
The only answer is that the violence is going to have to stop some time, and maybe it will be sooner rather than later.
Perhaps the most the government can pray for is a cold snap accompanied by freezing sleet. Maybe that will put out the fires.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4412968.stm
Likewise, despite his get-tough rhetoric, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has issued strict orders for the police not to shoot at rioters, even when they themselves are being fired upon.
If this were in America, the death toll would be significantly higher and might have already escalated into a mini-war. All of America's riots of similar proportions have had higher body counts.
By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer
Worsening urban unrest reached central Paris for the first time early Sunday and youths set ablaze shops, businesses, schools and nearly 1,300 cars from France's Mediterranean resort towns to the German border.
Some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security overnight while firefighters moved out around the city to douse blazing vehicles. Police reported nearly 200 arrests nationwide.
Police also found a gasoline bomb-making factory in a rundown building in Evry, a southern Paris suburb that contained 150 explosives, more than 100 bottles, gallons of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters' faces, Jean-Marie Huet, a senior Justice Ministry official, said Sunday.
For the second night in a row, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of marauding youths combed the Paris suburbs from the air and small teams of police were deployed to chase down rioters speeding from one attack to another in cars and on motorbikes.
The violence took a potentially alarming turn with attacks in the well-guarded French capital. Police said 32 cars were set afire there, mostly on the northern and southern edges of the city.
Inside the city, three cars were damaged by fire from gasoline bombs near the Place de la Republique neighborhood, where residents said they heard a loud explosion and saw flames shooting into the sky.
"We were very afraid," said Annie Partouche, 55, who had watched the cars burning from her apartment window. "We were afraid to leave the building."
The violence originally concentrated in northeastern suburbs of Paris with large immigrant populations is forcing France to confront anger long-simmering in the neighborhoods, where many Arab and African Muslim immigrants live on society's margins, struggling with unemployment, poor housing, racial discrimination, crime and a lack of opportunity.
Unrest spread Saturday night across France, extending west to the rolling fields of Normandy and south to Nice and Cannes on the Mediterranean coast.
The Normandy town of Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, appeared to suffer the worst damage. Arsonists burned at least 50 vehicles, part of a shopping center, a post office and two schools, said Patrick Hamon, spokesman for the national police.
Five police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with youths in the town, Hamon said.
"Rioters attacked us with baseball bats," Philippe Jofres, a deputy fire chief from the area told France-2 television. "We were attacked with pickaxes. It was war."
Fires also were reported in Nantes in the southwest, the Lille region in the north, and Saint-Dizier in the Ardennes region east of Paris. In the eastern city of Strasbourg near the German border, 18 cars were set ablaze, police said.
Seven classrooms went up in flames in the Essonne region south of Paris.
The number of cars torched overnight 1,295 across France was the highest since the violence began Oct. 27, France-Info radio and other French media reported. Police, who earlier put the number at 918, did not immediately confirm the figure.
The night before, 900 vehicles were burned throughout the country.
The rioting began 10 days ago after two teenagers of north African descent were accidentally electrocuted as they hid in a power substation, apparently believing police were chasing them. Anger was then fanned anew days ago when a tear gas bomb exploded in a mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois — the northern suburb where the youths died.
Government officials have held a series of meetings with Muslim religious leaders, local officials and youths from poor suburbs to try to calm the violence.
The director of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, one of the country's leading Muslim figures, met Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Saturday and urged the government to choose its words carefully and send a message of peace.
"In such difficult circumstances, every word counts," Boubakeur said.
The anger over the deaths of the teenagers spread to the Internet, with sites mourning the youths.
Along with messages of condolence and appeals for calm were insults targeting police, threats of more violence and warnings that the unrest will feed support for France's anti-immigration extreme right.
Arsonists have also burned grocery stores, video stores and other businesses in what Hamon called "copycat" crimes. "All these hoodlums see others setting fires and say they can do it, too."
France has the largest Muslim population in Western Europe with 5 million people.