Riots spread beyond Paris

Bands of youths torched cars, warehouses and a nursery school early today in a ninth night of violence in the suburbs of Paris and beyond.

French authorities appealed for calm in the face of the unprecedented streak of rioting.

Troublemakers fired bullets into a vandalised bus, set a warehouse ablaze, burned 44 cars in a lot in Suresnes, just west of Paris, and, in a malevolent turn, stoned rescuers helping someone who had fallen ill, police said.

Incidents, mainly fires, were reported in the northern city of Lille, in Toulouse, in the south west, Rouen, in the west and elsewhere – the second night that the unrest spread beyond metropolitan Paris.

An incendiary device was tossed at the wall of a synagogue in Pierrefitte, north west of Paris, where electricity went out after a burning car damaged an electrical pole.

“This is dreadful, unfortunate. Who did this? Against whom?” said Naima Mouis, 43, a hospital worker in Suresnes looking at the wreck of her burned-out car.

By midnight, scores of vehicles were torched around France, but no clear picture would be available before daybreak, an interior ministry operations centre tracking the violence said.

Roving gangs had set more than 500 vehicles ablaze 24 hours earlier, officials said.

Officials in the Yvelines region west of Paris said at least 60 vehicles were torched and a nursery school was all but burned to the ground.

Thirty mayors from the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the unrest started on October 27 met yesterday to issue a joint appeal for calm. Claude Pernes, mayor of Rosny-sous-Bois, denounced a “veritable guerrilla situation, urban insurrection” that has taken hold. Marches to call for calm were planned today in several suburbs.

The violence, which started after the accidental electrocution of two teenagers who believed police were chasing them in Seine-Saint-Denis – has laid bare discontent simmering in France’s poor suburbs ringing big cities.

Those areas are home to large populations of African Muslim immigrants and their children living in low-income housing projects marked by high unemployment, crime and despair.

A police officer at the operations centre said bullets were pumped into a vandalised bus in Sarcelles, north of Paris. Two days ago, bullets were fired four times, signalling a potentially dangerous turn of events.

The persistence of the violence prompted the American and Russian governments to advise citizens visiting Paris to steer clear of the suburbs, where authorities were struggling to gain control of the worst rioting in at least a decade.

An attack this week on a woman bus passenger highlighted the savage nature of some of the violence. The woman, in her 50s and on crutches, was doused with an inflammable liquid and set afire after passengers were forced to leave the bus, blocked by burning objects on the road, judicial officials said.

Last night n Meaux, east of Paris, youths prevented firefighters from evacuating a sick person from an apartment in a housing project, pelting them with stones and torching the awaiting ambulance, the interior ministry officer said.

Firefighters battled a furious blaze at a carpet warehouse in Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of Paris.

“I’m not able to sleep at night because you never know when a fire might break out,” said Mammed Chukri, 36, a Kurdish immigrant from northern Iraq living near the warehouse. “I have three children and I live in a five-storey building. If a fire hit, what would I do? If this continues, we’ll have to move out.”

A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no co-ordination between gangs in the various riot-hit suburbs. He said, however, that neighbourhood youths were communicating between themselves using mobile phone text messaging or emails to arrange meeting points and alert each other to police.

More than 1,200 vehicles have been torched since the unrest began, LCI television reported. Vandals have also set fires to schools, post offices and other symbols of the state.

The US Embassy, in a travel alert, called the protests “extremely violent” and warned visitors against taking trains to and from Charles de Gaulle airport because they passed through the troubled area.

The violence has alarmed the government of President Jacques Chirac, whose calls for calm have gone unheeded.

“This is the first time (suburban violence) has lasted so long, and the government appears taken aback at the magnitude,” said Pascal Perrineau, director of the Centre for Study of French Political Life.