Chirac calls security meeting as riots spread

French President Jacques Chirac called a security meeting of his top ministers tonight after urban rioting spread – with arsonists striking from the Mediterranean to the German border and into central Paris for the first time.

The meeting, planned for later this evening, came as Chirac faced mounting criticism from opposition politicians for not speaking publicly about the violence that has fanned out from Paris’s tough northeastern suburbs.

The intensity and scope of the unrest overnight was unprecedented since riots first erupted northeast of Paris on October 27. Arsonists burned 1,295 vehicles nationwide, including 35 within Paris itself – a sharp increase from the 897 attackeds the night before, said national police spokesman Patrick Hamon. Police made 349 arrests nationwide, he said.

“What we notice is that the bands of youths are, little by little, getting more organised,” arranging attacks through mobile phone text messages and learning how to make petrol bombs, Hamon said.

Police found a petrole bomb-making factory in a derelict building in Evry south of Paris, with more than 100 bottles ready to turned into bombs, another 50 already prepared, as well as stocks of fuel and hoods for hiding rioters’ faces, said senior Justice Ministry official Jean-Marie Huet. Police arrested six youths, all under 18, he added.

The discovery on Saturday night showed that petrol bombs being used by rioters “are not being improvised by kids in their bathrooms”.

Post offices, municipal buildings, provincial police stations and even nursery schools were targeted to the north, south, east and west of Paris. Police say copycat attacks are fanning the unrest, but there was no evidence that separate gangs were coordinating. Officials say older youths, many already known to police for previous crimes, appear to be teaching younger teens to make gasoline bombs and carry out attacks.

The unrest is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger in its suburbs, where many immigrants and their French-born children live on society’s margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimination and despair.

France, with some five million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Western Europe.

Overnight attacks were reported in unlikely southern cities including the cultural bastion of Avignon and the resort cities of Nice and Cannes.

There were also attacks in or around the cities of Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Strasbourg and in the Normandy area.

The unrest took another alarming turn with car burnings inside the well-guarded French capital. Most of the vehicles torched were on the northern and southern edges of the city. But police said three cars were damaged by fire from petrol bombs near the Place de la Republique neighbourhood, or 3rd district, northeast of City Hall and near the historic Marais district.

Before the latest incidents, some 2,300 police poured into the Paris region to bolster security.

The violence in Clichy-sous-Bois, a low-income suburb northeast of Paris, after the deaths of two teenagers, of Mauritanian and Tunisian origin. The youths were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation. They apparently thought they were being chased.

Since then, the situation has calmed in Clichy-sous-Bois, where clashes between youths and police have stopped. But, anger and violence has heightened in new areas. In all, 3,300 buses, cars and other vehicles have been torched since the violence began, said Hamon, the police spokesman.

He said the town of Evreux, 60 miles west of Paris, appeared hardest hit by marauding youths overnight, with arsonists destroying at least 50 vehicles, shops and businesses, a post office and two schools.

Five Evreux police officers and three firefighters were injured in clashes with youths, Hamon said.

“Rioters attacked us with baseball bats,” said Philippe Jofres, a deputy fire chief, told France-2 television. “We were attacked with pickaxes. It was war.”

For a second night, a helicopter equipped with spotlights and video cameras to track bands of youths combed the poor, heavily immigrant Seine-Saint-Denis region, northeast of Paris, where the violence began and has been concentrated.

Dozens of vehicles, two gymnasiums and at least three classrooms were set afire in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, outside Paris, local officials said.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy – blamed for inflaming violence with tough talk and calling troublemakers “scum” – visited the hard-hit Essonne region early today to ”give police support,” he said.