France violence waning

2005-11-09 16:17

Paris - Attacks by rioters in France dropped sharply for the first time in nearly two weeks of rampages as a state of emergency took effect on Wednesday, raising hopes the worst unrest since May 1968 might be receding.

Though widespread unrest still flared around some 100 towns overnight, with 617 cars torched and 330 people arrested, police recorded "a very significant drop" in intensity, said a senior interior ministry official, Claude Gueant.

It came after President Jacques Chirac's cabinet gave rarely invoked powers to certain regional prefects, or governors, to impose curfews and widen police search-and-seizure tactics.

The northern town of Amiens immediately applied the measure, and on Wednesday, the western towns of Rouen, Le Havre and Evreux said they would follow suit.

Three other areas - the town of Orleans and the Parisian suburbs of Raincy and Savigny-sur-Orge - used a different administrative procedure to declare municipal curfews overnight.

However, the prefect of the Seine-Saint-Denis region northeast of Paris, where the troubles started October 27, said he would not bring in a curfew after the violence diminished for the third successive night, though 26 vehicles, a school and a warehouse were still set alight.

Sharp decrease

Even if not extinguished, police and other officials said the troubles were clearly down.

In the southern city of Toulouse, which saw serious unrest at the start of the week - police reported only 21 burnt cars and six arrests.

"The intensity has fallen markedly," said a senior official.

Police in other major cities such as Strasbourg, Lille, Nantes and Rennes recorded a sharp decrease in the number of attacks, while Paris suburbs were also relatively calm.

In another hopeful sign, fire service reinforcements brought to the capital have been withdrawn due to the "extremely clear" fall in the number of arsons in the Paris region, the interior ministry said.

Since it began, the unrest has left one civilian dead and dozens of police injured, caused hundreds of millions of euros in economic damage and cast a cruel light on the failures of France's integration of immigrants from its former African colonies.

The explosion of violence has been carried out by youths mainly from the Arab and black communities that dominate poor out-of-town estates.

According to official figures, 1 800 people have been arrested since the beginning of the disturbances.

The justice ministry said a third had been released without charge, and 130 have been sentenced to prison with more facing court.

In a CSA poll published in Le Parisien newspaper on Wednesday, a vast majority of the French supported the tough security measures adopted by the government, with 73% supporting the curfews and 86% saying they were shocked and upset by the riots.

- AFP