Woman seriously hurt after arson attack on bus

A woman has been left with serious burns after a group of teenagers set fire to a bus in the French city of Marseille.

French police were braced for a surge of violence this weekend, a year after three weeks of riots swept through France’s poor neighbourhoods, where many immigrants and their French-born children live.

Scattered violence was reported on Friday, the one-year anniversary of the 2005 riots.

In the Marseille incident yesterday, three or four young people burst onto a bus in the southern city and tossed inside a bottle of flammable liquid before fleeing.

A fire started, seriously injuring a 26-year-old woman who suffered second- and third-degree burns on her arms, legs and face.

Three others were taken to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation, police said. The bus was destroyed.

In violence from Friday night to yesterday morning, six police officers suffered minor injuries and 47 people were arrested, the Interior Minister said. Bands of youths torched two public buses, and in troubled neighbourhoods around the country, youths set fire to a total of 277 vehicles.

On an average night in France, up to 100 cars are torched. In a statement, the Interior Ministry described the anniversary night as “relatively calm.”

The unrest could have been much worse.

At the height of last year’s rioting, about 1,400 cars were burned nationwide in a single night. The rioting was fuelled by anger at France’s failure to offer equal chances to many minorities – especially Arabs and blacks – and France’s five million-strong Muslim population.

The rioting was sparked by the deaths of two teens who were electrocuted in a power substation in Clichy-sous-Bois on October 27, 2005, where they were hiding after what they thought was a police chase.

Ahead of the weekend, the national police said about 4,000 people extra police and riot officers were deployed across the country to cope with a possible resurgence of violence. Some 7,000 police are at the ready on an average night in France, officials have said.