Police and fire crews attacked as Paris rioting spreads

The French government faced mounting pressure today 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.