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Rioting spreads beyond Paris suburbs
(AP)
Updated: 2005-11-05 13:45
Meanwhile, warehouses in Suresnes and Aubervilliers, on the northern edge of
Paris, were set ablaze. Officials said other fires raged outside the capital in
Lille, Toulouse, and Rouen, while an incendiary device was tossed at the wall
outside a synagogue in Pierrefitte, northwest of Paris.
Some 30 mayors from the Seine-Saint-Denis region where the unrest started
Oct. 27 met Friday to make a joint call for calm. Claude Pernes, mayor of
Rosny-sous-Bois, denounced a "veritable guerrilla situation, urban insurrection"
that has taken hold.
A national police spokesman, Patrick Hamon, said there appeared to be no
coordination among gangs in different areas. But he said youths in individual
neighborhoods were communicating by cell phone text messages or e-mails —
arranging meetings and warning each other about police operations.
The violence started Oct. 27 after the accidental electrocution of two
teenagers who believed police were chasing them in the Seine-Saint-Denis region,
dominated by low-income housing projects.
Since then riots have swelled into a broader challenge
against the French state and its security forces. The violence has exposed deep
discontent in neighborhoods where African and Muslim immigrants and their
French-born children are trapped by poverty, unemployment, racial
discrimination, crime, poor education and housing.
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