TurdBerglar
11-05-2005, 12:31 AM
BURN PARIS BURN
LE BLANC MESNIL, France - Violence erupted again in poor suburbs of Paris where youths torched buildings and dozens of cars and sporadic unrest spread in the early hours of Saturday to at least three other French cities.
In a potentially worrying development for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s beleaguered government, police said more cars were set ablaze outside the greater Paris area than in the capital’s suburbs, the epicenter of riots for more than a week.
“The general impression is that the situation in the greater Paris area is the same as last night but there are some scattered incidents elsewhere,” a police official told Reuters.
Vehicles and buildings were torched in three regions rimming Paris from the northwest to the east and as far away as Lille, 140 miles north of the French capital. It was the second night that unrest was reported outside the Paris region.
A police officer at an Interior Ministry operations center tracking the unrest said that bullets were fired into a vandalized bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris.
A warehouse was set ablaze in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris, and a fire was lit in an underground parking lot in the suburb of Persan, to the northwest.
Youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a project in the city of Meaux, east of Paris, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, the officer said.
At least four cars were set afire in Lille-Sud, just south of the center of Lille.
Bands of youths burned more than 500 vehicles the night before.
The violence prompted the U.S. and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of its impoverished outlying neighborhoods, where authorities were struggling to regain control.
A savage assault this week on a bus passenger highlighted the dangers.
Woman severely burned
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, judicial officials said. The bus had been forced to stop because of burning objects in its path. She was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns.
Justice Minister Pascal Clement deplored the incident Friday, saying it caused him “great emotion.”
With the unrest growing beyond the French capital, gangs burned five cars in the eastern city of Dijon and 11 in the southern city of Marseille.
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 cell phone text messages or e-mails — arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations.
Unrest began after teens electrocuted
The violence started Oct. 27 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 trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.
Across the Paris region, the burned remains of at least 520 cars littered streets, an increase from previous nights. Five police officers were lightly injured by youths throwing stones or bottles, the Interior Ministry said.
At a depot in Trappes, to the southwest, 27 buses were incinerated, officials said.
The commuter train line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport ran limited service Friday after two trains were targeted Wednesday night.
Travelers warned to avoid airport route
The U.S. Embassy called the protests “extremely violent” and warned travelers against taking trains to the airport because they pass through the troubled area.
The Foreign Ministry said it was concerned that foreign media coverage was exaggerating the situation. “I don’t have the feeling that foreign tourists in Paris are in any way placed in danger by these events,” ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said, adding that officials were “sometimes a bit surprised” by the foreign coverage.
Still, the violence has alarmed the government of President Jacques Chirac, whose calls for calm have gone unheeded.
“This is the first time (suburban violence) has lasted so long and the government appears taken aback at the magnitude,” said Pascal Perrineau, director of the Center for Study of French Political Life.
Relative of dead teen pleads for calm
The unrest erupted with youths angered over the deaths of Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, who were electrocuted when they hid in a power substation in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Traore’s brother, Siyakah Traore, called for protesters to “calm down and stop ransacking everything.”
“This is not how we are going to have our voices heard,” he told RTL radio, adding his voice to neighborhood groups working to stop the violence.
Dozens of residents and community leaders were stepping in to defuse tensions, with some walking between rioters and police to urge youths to back down.
Abderrhamane Bouhout, head of the Bilal mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois, said he had enlisted 50 youths to try stop the violence. “We’ve had positive results,” he said.
LE BLANC MESNIL, France - Violence erupted again in poor suburbs of Paris where youths torched buildings and dozens of cars and sporadic unrest spread in the early hours of Saturday to at least three other French cities.
In a potentially worrying development for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s beleaguered government, police said more cars were set ablaze outside the greater Paris area than in the capital’s suburbs, the epicenter of riots for more than a week.
“The general impression is that the situation in the greater Paris area is the same as last night but there are some scattered incidents elsewhere,” a police official told Reuters.
Vehicles and buildings were torched in three regions rimming Paris from the northwest to the east and as far away as Lille, 140 miles north of the French capital. It was the second night that unrest was reported outside the Paris region.
A police officer at an Interior Ministry operations center tracking the unrest said that bullets were fired into a vandalized bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris.
A warehouse was set ablaze in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris, and a fire was lit in an underground parking lot in the suburb of Persan, to the northwest.
Youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a project in the city of Meaux, east of Paris, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, the officer said.
At least four cars were set afire in Lille-Sud, just south of the center of Lille.
Bands of youths burned more than 500 vehicles the night before.
The violence prompted the U.S. and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of its impoverished outlying neighborhoods, where authorities were struggling to regain control.
A savage assault this week on a bus passenger highlighted the dangers.
Woman severely burned
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, judicial officials said. The bus had been forced to stop because of burning objects in its path. She was rescued by the driver and hospitalized with severe burns.
Justice Minister Pascal Clement deplored the incident Friday, saying it caused him “great emotion.”
With the unrest growing beyond the French capital, gangs burned five cars in the eastern city of Dijon and 11 in the southern city of Marseille.
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 cell phone text messages or e-mails — arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations.
Unrest began after teens electrocuted
The violence started Oct. 27 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 trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.
Across the Paris region, the burned remains of at least 520 cars littered streets, an increase from previous nights. Five police officers were lightly injured by youths throwing stones or bottles, the Interior Ministry said.
At a depot in Trappes, to the southwest, 27 buses were incinerated, officials said.
The commuter train line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport ran limited service Friday after two trains were targeted Wednesday night.
Travelers warned to avoid airport route
The U.S. Embassy called the protests “extremely violent” and warned travelers against taking trains to the airport because they pass through the troubled area.
The Foreign Ministry said it was concerned that foreign media coverage was exaggerating the situation. “I don’t have the feeling that foreign tourists in Paris are in any way placed in danger by these events,” ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said, adding that officials were “sometimes a bit surprised” by the foreign coverage.
Still, the violence has alarmed the government of President Jacques Chirac, whose calls for calm have gone unheeded.
“This is the first time (suburban violence) has lasted so long and the government appears taken aback at the magnitude,” said Pascal Perrineau, director of the Center for Study of French Political Life.
Relative of dead teen pleads for calm
The unrest erupted with youths angered over the deaths of Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, who were electrocuted when they hid in a power substation in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois.
Traore’s brother, Siyakah Traore, called for protesters to “calm down and stop ransacking everything.”
“This is not how we are going to have our voices heard,” he told RTL radio, adding his voice to neighborhood groups working to stop the violence.
Dozens of residents and community leaders were stepping in to defuse tensions, with some walking between rioters and police to urge youths to back down.
Abderrhamane Bouhout, head of the Bilal mosque in Clichy-sous-Bois, said he had enlisted 50 youths to try stop the violence. “We’ve had positive results,” he said.