Emergency fails to quell French riots

PARIS – A state of emergency in riot-areas of France failed to prevent a 13th night of rioting in poor city suburbs yesterday as youths torched more than 600 vehicles.

But police said the violence appeared to be waning, with fewer incidents pitting rioters against the security forces and no reports of shots fired. The government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency covering the worst-hit parts of the country under a decree, which came into force Wednesday after it was published in the official journal, allowing regional authorities to declare curfews to combat the violence.The first to act under the new powers, the city of Amiens north of Paris, declared an overnight curfew for unaccompanied persons under 16 and a ban on petrol sales to minors, even before the decree came into force.Mayors have already declared separate, local curfews, in Orleans and Savigny-sur-Orge, both south of Paris, and in Raincy northeast of the capital.Across the country, 617 vehicles were torched overnight, compared to 1 173 on Tuesday, said Claude Gueant, a senior aide to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.He said 1 800 people had been arrested since the riots erupted.Despite the car-burnings and arrests, police said the overall situation was calmer than on recent nights, when dozens of police officers were injured, two by gunshot.”There has been a marked decrease (in violence), particularly in the provinces, and the downward trend is continuing in Ile-de-France (the greater Paris region),” a national police official said.Sarkozy, visiting police on Tuesday in southwestern Toulouse, a flashpoint of unrest in recent days, said there had been a “fairly significant fall” in the violence.Earlier, on the outskirts of Toulouse, police charged a gang of youths who had attacked them with stones and firebombs.A gas-powered bus exploded after it came under attack with a Molotov cocktail in the Bordeaux suburbs, also in the southwest.In southeastern France, Lyon’s entire public transport network was shut down after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a train station.And around 50 youths tried, unsuccessfully, to ram their way into a supermarket in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, where 25 people were arrested and 38 vehicles and dustbins torched overnight.In Arras, in northern France, a fire ripped through a shopping centre, spreading from a furniture store to a carpet retailer next door.The situation was relatively calm in the northeast Paris suburbs where the violence began, police said, with isolated cases of arson and a dozen arrests.Meanwhile, in neighbouring Belgium, a dozen cars were set alight, although police downplayed concerns about serious violence spreading over the border.The French government’s emergency measure was the toughest response to date to rioting in high-immigration suburbs which has left more than 6 000 cars burned, dozens of policemen injured and one civilian dead.It invoked a 1955 law, enacted at the start of troubles that triggered the war of independence in French-controlled Algeria, which permits the declaration of curfews, house searches and bans on public meetings.Seventy-three per cent of French people support the government’s curfew decision, according to a poll in Le Parisien/Aujourd’hui newspaper.- Nampa-AFPThe government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency covering the worst-hit parts of the country under a decree, which came into force Wednesday after it was published in the official journal, allowing regional authorities to declare curfews to combat the violence.The first to act under the new powers, the city of Amiens north of Paris, declared an overnight curfew for unaccompanied persons under 16 and a ban on petrol sales to minors, even before the decree came into force.Mayors have already declared separate, local curfews, in Orleans and Savigny-sur-Orge, both south of Paris, and in Raincy northeast of the capital.Across the country, 617 vehicles were torched overnight, compared to 1 173 on Tuesday, said Claude Gueant, a senior aide to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.He said 1 800 people had been arrested since the riots erupted.Despite the car-burnings and arrests, police said the overall situation was calmer than on recent nights, when dozens of police officers were injured, two by gunshot.”There has been a marked decrease (in violence), particularly in the provinces, and the downward trend is continuing in Ile-de-France (the greater Paris region),” a national police official said.Sarkozy, visiting police on Tuesday in southwestern Toulouse, a flashpoint of unrest in recent days, said there had been a “fairly significant fall” in the violence.Earlier, on the outskirts of Toulouse, police charged a gang of youths who had attacked them with stones and firebombs.A gas-powered bus exploded after it came under attack with a Molotov cocktail in the Bordeaux suburbs, also in the southwest.In southeastern France, Lyon’s entire public transport network was shut down after a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a train station.And around 50 youths tried, unsuccessfully, to ram their way into a supermarket in the Mediterranean city of Marseille, where 25 people were arrested and 38 vehicles and dustbins torched overnight.In Arras, in northern France, a fire ripped through a shopping centre, spreading from a furniture store to a carpet retailer next door.The situation was relatively calm in the northeast Paris suburbs where the violence began, police said, with isolated cases of arson and a dozen arrests.Meanwhile, in neighbouring Belgium, a dozen cars were set alight, although police downplayed concerns about serious violence spreading over the border.The French government’s emergency measure was the toughest response to date to rioting in high-immigration suburbs which has left more than 6 000 cars burned, dozens of policemen injured and one civilian dead.It invoked a 1955 law, enacted at the start of troubles that triggered the war of independence in French-controlled Algeria, which permits the declaration of curfews, house searches and bans on public meetings.Seventy-three per cent of French people support the government’s curfew decision, according to a poll in Le Parisien/Aujourd’hui newspaper.- Nampa-AFP