lesson for antiwar lefties: Rioting Spreads in Paris Suburbs as Angry Youths Burn More Cars
By CRAIG S. SMITH
PARIS, Nov. 3 - Angry youths clashed with police and firefighters outside Paris late Wednesday in the worst of seven straight nights of violence set off by the accidental death of two teenagers. By late Thursday, more cars were burning in at least one of the city's northern suburbs.
Gunshots were fired at police officers and firefighters in three separate incidents Wednesday night, said Prefect Jean-François Cordet, the government's top official in Seine-St.-Denis, a department north of Paris that includes a belt of working-class neighborhoods with a large immigrant population from North Africa and the sub-Saharan region.
In the clashes on Wednesday night, a police station was ransacked, a garage was set on fire and a shopping center and two schools were vandalized, Mr. Cordet said. Riot police forces have used tear gas and rubber bullets to repel the attacks.
Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a commuter line linking Paris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains. One passenger was slightly injured by broken glass, according to local news reports. The violence picked up again as night fell with burning cars reported in the suburb of Stains.
Rampaging gangs have torched more than 200 cars in the past week, and dozens of firefighters and police officers have been injured, none seriously, since the deaths of two youths.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who canceled a trip to Canada this week because of the violence, urged citizens and the police to restore order. The continuing violence has isolated the country's tough-talking anticrime interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, whom many people believe exacerbated the situation with his vow to "clean out" the troubled neighborhoods.
Mr. Sarkozy's tough stance also has worsened a split in the governing Union for a Popular Majority between his supporters and Mr. Villepin's. Both men are vying to become the party's presidential candidate in 2007. Mr. Villepin has emerged as a voice of moderation to balance Mr. Sarkozy's bluntness.
The latest violence began in the suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois a week ago after two teenagers were electrocuted by a power transformer while hiding from police. Local youths, who believed police had chased the boys into the transformer's enclosure, took to the streets, setting cars on fire in protest. A preliminary government inquiry found in a report released Thursday that the youths were not being pursued by the police.
The continuing unrest appears to be fueled less by perceived police brutality than by the frustration of young men who have no work and see little hope for the future. |
