French Official: Worst violence is over
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-04 21:41

A wave of arson attacks in Paris' restive suburbs punctured what authorities said Friday was otherwise the first night of relative calm after a week of clashes between riot police and angry youths.

Firefighters tries to extinguish a raging fire of a carpet warehouse in the Paris suburb, Aulnay sous Bois, early Friday, Nov. 4, 2005 after the seventh consecutive nights of violence on the outskirts of Paris. More than a thousand of police were deployed to again do battle with groups as a kindergarten, a gymnasium, government offices and hundreds of cars have been torched over the past week by youths in largely immigrant areas who began rampaging after two of their peers were electrocuted at a power substation while hiding from police they feared were chasing them. [AP]

Officials said at least 400 cars were torched in the Paris region, an increase from previous nights. But there were fewer direct clashes with riot police who were deployed in force across the suburbs north of Paris following Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's vow to restore order.

"The peak is now behind us," Gerard Gaudron, mayor of Aulnay-sous-Bois, one of the worst-hit suburbs, told France-Info radio. He said parents were determined to keep their teenagers at home to prevent unrest. "People have had enough. People are afraid. It's time for this to stop."

But reports of unrest also surfaced north of Paris in the Normandy region and to the east in Burgundy, according to France-Info radio.

Small-scale suburban violence and car-torchings are a regular, though largely unreported, fact of life in troubled suburbs of Paris and other French cities dominated by low-income housing projects marked by unemployment and delinquency. What sets the current unrest apart is its duration, and the way it rapidly ignited beyond the original flash point of Clichy-sous-Bois in northeast Paris.

The unrest started Oct. 27 when angry youths took to streets over the accidental deaths of two teenagers — Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17 — electrocuted in a power substation where they were hiding from police.

Traore's brother, Siyakah Traore, called Friday for youths to "calm down and stop ransacking everything."

"This is not how we are going to have our voices heard," he said on RTL radio.

In the troubled region of Seine-Saint-Denis northeast of the capital, arson attacks destroyed 187 vehicles and five buildings, including three sprawling warehouses, said the region's top government official, Prefect Jean-Francois Cordet.

However, Cordet said in a statement that police reported seeing fewer large groups of youths rioting and, "contrary to the previous nights, there were fewer direct clashes with the forces of order."

A commuter train line that links Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport northeast of the capital was still running a scaled-back service Friday after two trains were targeted Wednesday night. The SNCF train authority said one in five trains was running and conductors of night trains were demanding onboard security.

Youths fired buckshot at riot police vehicles in Neuilly-sur-Marne, further east, and a group of 30 to 40 harassed police near a synagogue in Stains where a city bus was torched and a school classroom partially burned, said Cordet.

A bus depot was set on fire to the west of Paris in the town of Trappes, incinerating 27 buses, authorities said.

The unrest was scaled-back from the sometimes ferocious rioting of previous nights. In overnight clashes Wednesday, rioters in three towns fired live bullets at police and firefighters, none of whom were injured.

The rioting has grown into a broader challenge for the French state. It has laid bare discontent simmering in suburbs that are heavily populated by poor African Muslim immigrants and their French-born children, many trapped by poverty, crime and poor education.

France's Muslim population, an estimated 5 million, is Western Europe's largest. But rather than being embraced as equal citizens, immigrants and children often complain of police harassment and job discrimination.