Hydrablog

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/world/europe/28riot.html
November 28, 2007
77 Police Officers Hurt in Paris Riots
By KATRIN BENNHOLD and ARIANE BERNARD [France] [EU] [Paris] [recently a showdown between France’s traditionally strong unions] [versus new president Sarkozy] [with apparent sabotage of railways, public continues to back Sarkozy] [here a near repeat of the holidays 2005 that spilled into January 2006] [I believe Sarkozy was interior minister at the time] [*****]
PARIS, Nov. 27 — Nearly 80 French police officers were injured during clashes with youths in a working- and lower-class suburb north of Paris last night, and six are in serious condition, police officials said, after some of the youths used hunting shotguns as well as more conventional guns, fire bombs and rocks.
Of the 77 officers who were injured, six were in serious condition, two of them as a result of gunfire, said Francis Debuire, a representative of the National Union of Police Officers in the district where the fighting took place.
Police union officials expressed concern that the violence was more severe than the fighting that had occurred in the Paris suburbs over three weeks of rioting in 2005.
“The violence over the last days has been worse than two years ago in terms of its intensity,” [******] Mr. Debuire said.
As in the 2005 riots, the youths were mostly attacking the police mostly with fire bombs, rocks and other projectiles, but they also had guns and appeared to use them more this time. Mr. Debuire said youths used hunting shotguns and also some conventional weapons.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has appealed for calm, will hold an emergency meeting with security officials to discuss the violence when he returns from a visit to China on Wednesday, [****] his spokesman said in a statement.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon and the interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, will both attend the meeting, said the spokesman, David Martinon.
The clashes occurred for the second night in a row, with dozens of youths confronting large contingents of heavily armed riot police officers and moving nimbly from target to target on several fronts, burning cars and a garbage truck. [*******]
The clashes began when two teenagers traveling on a motorbike died in a collision with a police car on Sunday afternoon in the town of Villiers-le-Bel, [******] about 12 miles north of Paris, in the Val d’Oise department. The two teenagers were identified in the French news media merely as 15-year-old Moushin and 16-year-old Larami, who were riding a motorbike in Villiers-le-Bel.
On Monday night, more than 100 youths had pushed riot police officers into the middle of a four-way intersection, raining projectiles on them from at least two directions. Police officers responded with tear gas and paint guns to mark the attackers for future arrest. Broken glass and used tear-gas canisters littered the roads.
During the violence, a garbage truck was on fire within sight of the intersection, apparently unattended as youths lined up behind it.
At least 15 cars were burned, with the police guarding the local fire department and protecting firefighters as they put out fires. At least three buildings suffered some fire damage, including a library and a post office, a spokesman for the police in Val d’Oise said.
Standing on the sideline of the battles Monday night, one youth was holding a poster of one of the two dead youths: “Deceased 25/11/07. Dead for nothing.”
The clashes on Monday night took place not far from where Moushin and Larami died, and they followed other confrontations between youths and the police on Sunday night.
Within an hour of the teenagers’ deaths, bands of youths began to throw stones at a police car. Through the evening, they burned down the police station in Villiers-le-Bel, and set fire to four privately owned buildings and 28 cars, the police said. Nine arrests were made, mainly in Villiers-le-Bel.
The violence spread to nearby Sarcelles, and some damage was reported in other towns.
The two deaths in Villiers-le-Bel recall the deaths of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, teenagers who were electrocuted in a power station in another suburb, Clichy-sous-Bois, in October 2005. [what precipitated the 2005 incidents] [*****] Their deaths led to the three-week civil unrest that eventually spread to many urban areas in France. Mr. Sarkozy, who was interior minister at the time, made a name for himself by calling for tough measures against the youths involved.
Katrin Bennhold reported from Paris, and Araine Bernard reported from Villiers-le-Bel, France.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company