French govt hits back

2005-11-08 12:21

Paris - The French cabinet on Tuesday authorised local officials to impose curfews under a state of emergency law to halt riots, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said.

"We will now be able to act in a preventative manner to avoid these incidents," Sarkozy said. "We will monitor, bit by bit, the evolution of events."

There were no immediate details on where or how curfews might be imposed or how long they might last.

The plan to allow curfews to halt riots that have spread across France was first announced by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin on Monday night.

'Won't change anything'

President Jacques Chirac convened an emergency cabinet meeting Tuesday to empower authorities to impose curfews on lawless suburbs after rioters rampaged across France for the 12th straight night.

Police reported 330 arrests and said youths burned 1 173 vehicles overnight. Twelve officers were lightly injured and some reported being fired at, but not hit, with buckshot.

The unrest is the worst the country has experienced since student revolts in 1968.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said late on Monday the cabinet would invoke by decree a 60-year-old law first brought in as an unsuccessful attempt to quell an insurrection in Algeria, at a time when the north African country was a French colony.

Villepin, speaking on national television, said regional authorities would be given the power to impose curfews "where necessary".

The measure - a state of emergency for areas around cities and towns - would ban night time movements of people and vehicles and allow police to set up roadblocks around certain zones.

The government has ruled out an army intervention to stop the violence, which spread to 300 towns over the weekend, but said that 1 500 police and gendarme reservists would be deployed as reinforcements for 8 000 officers already on the ground.

A town mayor near the epicentre of the riots, in the northeastern Paris suburb of Raincy, already imposed a curfew from Monday to "avoid a tragedy".

Suburban youths quoted by Le Parisien newspaper said the emergency measures "won't change anything".

The escalating violence claimed its first life on Monday as a 61-year-old man, who was beaten into a coma by a hooded assailant outside of his home north of Paris last Friday, died in hospital.

Overnight, rioters burned down a gymnasium in the Paris region.

- AFP