France sends in extra police to quell riots

France's interior minister sent extra riot police to the southern port city of Marseille today after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, seriously burning a young passenger.

French police have braced for a surge of violence this weekend, as Friday was the first anniversary of the start of riots in poor neighbourhoods where many immigrants and their French-born children live.

There was scattered unrest late on Friday, but the most serious violence occurred yesterday with the bus attack in Marseille.

Three or four young people burst onto the bus and tossed in a bottle of flammable liquid before fleeing, police said, citing witnesses' accounts. A fire started, seriously injuring a 26-year-old woman who suffered second- and third-degree burns on her arms, legs and face.

The woman was breathing with help from a respirator, the Marseille hospital system said. Doctors were deeply worried about lung damage from smoke. Three other people also were treated for smoke inhalation, police said. The bus was destroyed, and bus service was suspended in Marseille.

President Jacques Chirac telephoned the woman's family, and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin condemned the attacks and called a meeting for Monday on public transport safety. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's office said he was sending two extra companies of riot police to Marseille.

Three weeks of rioting last year were fuelled by anger at France's failure to offer equal chances to many minorities - especially Arabs and blacks - and France's 5 million-strong Muslim population.

The rioting was sparked by the deaths of two teenagers 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.

Before the first anniversary, national police said about 4,000 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, and bands of youths typically set fire to 100 cars a night.

On Friday, youths set fire to two buses in the suburbs outside Paris, but passengers were forced out of the vehicles beforehand and nobody was injured. In troubled neighbourhoods around the country, youths set fire to 277 cars late Friday and early Saturday.

France's trouble integrating minorities and the unrest in poor neighbourhoods have become political priorities in the campaign for next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.

The government passed an equal opportunities law this spring and has poured in funds to its "sensitive" areas, but disenchantment still reigns.