Another Round of Riots in France
Erick Stakelbeck
November 27, 2007
Just like in 2005, the rioters are being referred to in the media only as "youths." Hmmm. And what, exactly, is their ethnic 9Arab and North African) religous (overwhelmingly Muslim) origin?
VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France - Police reinforcements streamed into the tough suburbs north of Paris on Tuesday after a second night of rioting by bands of youths who have burned cars and buildings and — in an ominous turn — shot at officers.
A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used. More than 80 officers were reported injured overnight.
The suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, where the trouble first erupted, appeared calm in the early hours after sundown Tuesday. But rioting flared in the southern city of Toulouse, where 10 cars and a library went up in flames, police said.
The government was striving to keep violence from spreading in a stern test for new President Nicolas Sarkozy. It showed that anger still smolders in France's poor neighborhoods, where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live largely isolated from the rest of society.
The trigger was the deaths Sunday of two minority teens when their motorscooter collided with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel, a blue-collar town on Paris' northern edge.
Residents claimed the officers left without helping the teens. Prosecutor Marie-Therese de Givry denied that, saying police stayed on the scene until firefighters arrived.
Rioting and arson erupted Sunday night, with youths attacking a police station. The violence worsened Monday night as it spread from Villiers-le-Bel to other impoverished suburbs north of the French capital. Rioters burned a library, a nursery school and a car dealership and tried to set some buildings on fire by crashing burning cars into them.
Can Sarkozy--who usually says the right things when it comes to battling radical Islam and French crime in general--hold this mess together?
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