Youths Riot for 3rd Night Outside Paris
Pastor Dale Morgan
Youths Riot for 3rd Night Outside Paris*
Wednesday November 28, 2007 5:46 AM
By NICOLAS GARRIGA
Associated Press Writer
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France (AP) - Youths rampaged for a third night in the
tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late
Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and
buildings and - in an ominous turn - shot at officers.
A senior police union official warned that ``urban guerrillas'' had
joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks
of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were
rarely used.
Bands of young people set more cars on fire in and around
Villiers-le-Bel, the Paris suburb where the latest trouble first
erupted, and 22 youths were taken into custody, the regional government
said. In the southern city of Toulouse, 20 cars were set ablaze, and
fires at two libraries were quickly brought under control, police said.
Despite the renewed violence, France's prime minister said the situation
was calmer than the two previous nights. About 1,000 officers patrolled
trouble spots in and around Villiers-le-Bel on Tuesday, he said.
The government was striving to keep violence from spreading in what was
shaping up as a stern test for new President Nicolas Sarkozy. The unrest
showed anger still smolders in France's poor neighborhoods, where many
Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest
of society.
The trigger was the deaths Sunday of two minority teens when their
motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a
blue-collar town on Paris' northern edge.
Residents claimed the officers left without helping the teens.
Prosecutor Marie-Therese de Givry denied that, saying police stayed on
the scene until firefighters arrived.
Rioting and arson quickly erupted after the crash. The violence worsened
Monday night as it spread from Villiers-le-Bel to other impoverished
suburbs north of the French capital. Rioters burned a library, a nursery
school and a car dealership and tried to set some buildings on fire by
crashing burning cars into them.
Officials have pledged tough punishments for rioters: Eight people were
convicted Tuesday in fast-track trials and sentenced to 3-10 months in
prison, the regional government said.
Police reinforcements were moved into trouble spots north of Paris on
Tuesday. Helicopters flew overhead, shining powerful spotlights into
apartment buildings to keep people from leaving their homes.
``The situation is under control,'' said Denis Joubert, director of
public safety for the region surrounding Villiers-le-Bel.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who was briefed by police in
Villiers-le-Bel, said things were ``much calmer than the previous two
nights, but we feel that things are still fragile, and we need a large
preventative force on the ground so that what happened last night does
not happen again.''
Patrice Ribeiro of the Synergie police union said rioters this time
included ``genuine urban guerrillas,'' saying the use of firearms -
hunting shotguns so far - had added a dangerous dimension.
Police said 82 officers were injured Monday night, 10 of them by
buckshot and pellets. Four were seriously wounded, the force said.
Police unions said 30 officers were struck by buckshot.
One rioter with a shotgun ``was firing off two shots, reloading in a
stairwell, coming back out - boom, boom - and firing again,'' said
Gilles Wiart, No. 2 official in the SGP-FO police union.
Youths, many of them Arab and black children of immigrants, again
appeared to be lashing out at police and other targets seen to represent
a French establishment they feel has left them behind.
``I don't think it's an ethnic problem,'' Wiart said. ``Most of all it
is youths who reject all state authority. They attack firefighters,
everything that represents the state.''
Suspicion of the police runs high among people in the drab housing
project where the two teenagers died in the crash. The boys were
identified in French media only by their first names, Lakhami, 16, and
Mouhsin, 15.
There have long been tensions between France's largely white police
force and the ethnic minorities trapped in poor neighborhoods.
Despite decades of problems and heavy state investments to improve
housing and create jobs, the depressed projects that ring Paris are a
world apart from the tourist attractions of the capital. Police speak of
no-go zones where they and firefighters fear to patrol.
``The problem of bad relations between the police and minorities is
underestimated,'' said criminologist Sebastian Roche.
Sarkozy, speaking from China, appealed for calm and called a security
meeting with his Cabinet ministers for Wednesday on his return home.
Sarkozy was interior minister, in charge of police, during the riots of
2005 and took a hard line against the violence. He angered many in
housing projects when he called delinquents there ``scum.''
The rioting youths ``want Sarkozy - they want him to come and explain''
what happened to the two teenage boys, said Linda Beddar, a 40-year-old
mother of three in Villiers-le-Bel. Beddar woke Tuesday to find the
library across from her house a burned-out shell.
The violence two years ago also started in the suburbs of northern
Paris, when two teens were electrocuted in a power substation while
hiding from police. The government is keen to keep the new violence from
spreading.
In Villiers-le-Bel late Monday, arsonists set fire to the municipal
library and burned books littered its floor Tuesday. Shops and
businesses were also attacked, and more than 70 vehicles were torched,
authorities said.
Rioters even rammed burning cars into buildings, trying to set the
structures on fire, authorities said. Police reported six arrests.
Several hundred youths organized in small groups led the rioting in
Villiers-le-Bel, and incidents were also reported in five other towns
north of Paris, the regional government reported.
It refused to give specific figures on injuries among the police,
rioters or other civilians, or the numbers of cars and buildings set on
fire, saying it feared that doing so would encourage youths to try to
wound more officers and destroy more property.
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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton in Villiers-le-Bel and John
Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.