Police and Fire Crews Under Attack As Paris Riots Spread
Posted on: Friday, 4 November 2005, 09:00 CST
By LIAM CHRISTOPHER
THE French government faced mounting pressure yesterday as suburban unrest took on dangerous new momentum, with shots fired at police and fire crews as they battled youths who torched car dealerships and public buses and hurled rocks at commuter trains.
Rioters ignored an appeal for calm from French President Jacques Chirac, whose government worked feverishly to fend off a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in Parisian suburbs heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a string of emergency meetings with Cabinet ministers throughout the day, as police braced for another night of violence.
The riots, sparked last Thursday by the accidental deaths of two teenagers in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, spread last night to at least 10 Paris-region towns with acts of violence that ranged from stone-throwing and torching vehicles to attacking police.
Four shots were fired at riot police and firefighters, without causing injuries, said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the troubled Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris where the violence has been concentrated.
Nine people were injured in Seine-Saint-Denis and 315 cars were torched across the Paris area, officials said.
In the tough northeastern suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois, gangs of youths torched a Renault car dealership and destroyed at least a dozen cars, a supermarket and a local gymnasium.
Traffic was halted this morning on a suburban commuter rail line which links Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains overnight at the Le Blanc-Mesnil station, forcing a conductor from one train.
The unrest has highlighted the division between France's big cities and their poor suburbs.
Frustrations have been simmering in housing projects that dominate the area, which is marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty
Source: Daily Post; Liverpool
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