Unrest reaches heart of Paris

2005-11-06 14:16

Paris - Spreading urban unrest - with arson attacks on vehicles, nursery schools and other targets in France from the Mediterranean to the German border - for the first time reached central Paris, where police said on Sunday that 28 cars were burned overnight.

Police made 186 arrests nationwide as the violence, in its 10th night, moved from poor suburbs into the capital - France's seat of power - and reached new intensity across the country.

The number of cars torched overnight - 918 across France - was the highest yet since the unrest began October 27. Of the cars burned, 545 were outside of the wider Paris region - marking the first time arson attacks in other parts of France outnumbered those in the Parisian suburbs where the violence began, the Interior Ministry said.

The night before, 900 vehicles were burned throughout the country.

The latest count of overnight arson attacks, still incomplete, could rise further, police said, adding that it did not include shops, gymnasiums, nursery schools and other targets attacked by bands of youths.

The unrest took a potentially alarming turn with reported attacks inside the well-guarded French capital. Police said three cars were damaged by fire from gasoline bombs in the Place de la Republique neighbourhood, or 3rd district, northeast of City Hall and near the historic Marais district.

On the Paris street where the three cars were set afire, residents spoke Sunday morning of hearing a loud explosion and then seeing flames shooting into the sky.

"We were very afraid," said Annie Partouche, 55, who had watched the cars burning from her apartment window and said she lined the window ledges with wet towels to keep dense smoke from getting in. "We were afraid to leave the building."

The three burned cars had been removed by Sunday morning, but the facade of a nearby building was blackened by soot.

It was not immediately clear whether anything other than vehicles was targeted in Paris.

The violence began in a low-income suburb northeast of Paris after the deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian origin, accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation. They apparently thought they were being chased.

The violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live on society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair - fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as for Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out.

France, with some 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in western Europe.

About 2 300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security on what had been expected to be a restive Saturday night.

The town of Evreux, 100km west of Paris, appeared hardest hit by marauding youths overnight, national police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Arsonists there laid waste to at least 50 vehicles, shops and businesses at a shopping centre, a post office and two schools, he said.

That the shopping centre was partially burned shows "there is a will to pillage," Hamon said. "This has been true since the start." Five police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with youths, he said.

For the second night in a row, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of youths combed the poor, heavily immigrant Seine-Saint-Denis region, northeast of Paris, where the violence began and has been concentrated. Small teams of police were deployed to chase youths speeding from one attack to another in cars and on motorbikes.

Arson attacks also were reported to the north, south, east and west of Paris, often in unlikely places such as the cultural bastion of Avignon, southern France, and the resort cities of Nice and Cannes, a police officer said.

Attacks 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, 18 cars were set alight in full daylight, police there said.

Dozens of vehicles, two gymnasiums and at least three classrooms were set afire in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, outside Paris, local officials said. France-Info radio reported residents catching two 14-year-olds trying to light a fire in Drancy, northeast of Paris, and turning them over to police.

The national police spokesman blamed the spread of the arson attacks on "hoodlums" carrying out "copycat" acts. There appeared to be no coordination between groups in different areas, Hamon said. But within gangs, youths were communicating by cell phones or e-mails.

Even nursery schools have not been spared the fury of those igniting unrest.

Five classrooms of the Sleeping Beauty Nursery School in Grigny, in the Essonne region south of Paris, went up in flames late Saturday along with two classrooms of another school, police said. It was at least the third school set ablaze in several days. In Acheres, on the edge of the St Germain forest west of Paris, arsonists torched a nursery school late Friday.

Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy - blamed for inflaming violence with tough talk and calling troublemakers "scum" - visited the hard-hit Essonne region early on Sunday to "give police support," he said.

- AP