Cops, youths in ongoing clashes

2005-10-31 16:15

Clichy-Sous-Bois - Police clashed with angry youths in a Paris suburb for the fourth straight night, police sources said on Monday, with accusations over the use of teargas in a mosque set to exacerbate the situation further.

Six police officers were slightly injured after being hit by projectiles, the sources said.

Eleven people were arrested after the violence in which eight cars and 16 rubbish bins were torched, said departmental security spokesperson Jean-Luc Sidot.

There were no reports of any civilian casualties as the northeastern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois descended into violence once again.

The violence was originally triggered when two teenagers, aged 15 and 17, died by electrocution on Thursday after they scaled the wall of an electrical relay station and fell against a transformer.

The local public prosecutor said the boys wrongly thought they were being chased by police - based on questioning of a 21-year-old man who was with them and survived the electrocution.

Probe into incident

Police deny the youths were being chased but an investigation has been opened by judicial and internal police authorities.

More serious clashes in the area on Thursday and Friday had pitted hundreds of youths against police, with 23 officers injured and 13 people taken into custody, as the burnt-out wrecks of dozens of cars lay smouldering on the streets.

Saturday night was calmer, although several cars were set alight and several arrests were made.

The situation in the area was calm again shortly after midnight on Monday.

Earlier in the evening, near the local mosque, "100 to 150 youths were looking for a fight", said Sidot.

One or more teargas canisters were hurled inside the mosque, by an unknown source, according to the police and the local mayor's office.

It was "very probably not a police officer who launched the teargas canister into the mosque, but there will be an enquiry", said Sidot.

However Muslim faithful inside the mosque accused the police of throwing the teargas into their place of worship.

Crime policies behind tensions

Tough new French anti-crime policies are partly to blame for riots that gripped a Paris suburb at the weekend, after the accidental deaths of two teenagers who thought they were under police chase, the opposition and rights campaigners said on Sunday.

Described by the main police union as "guerrilla" violence, the nights of rioting came a week after France's fiery interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, vowed to wage a "war without mercy" on crime in the suburbs of Paris.

Critics say Sarkozy's tough talk is feeding tensions between youths and the police while failing to cut crime in run-down suburbs, high-immigration areas facing chronic poverty, unemployment and a lack of prospects.

During a highly-publicised visit on Tuesday to Argenteuil, a suburb northwest of the capital, Sarkozy was pelted with stones and bottles as he outlined a new government plan to root out crime from the neighbourhood.

Hundreds of Clichy-sous-Bois residents held a peaceful march on Saturday in tribute to the two dead teenagers, with groups of youths wearing tee-shirts marked "Dead for Nothing".

A lawyer representing the families of the victims said they intended to press civil charges for failure to assist a person in danger.

- AFP