www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/03/D8DL2HH0B.html
By JAMEY KEATEN Associated Press Writer AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France Rioting youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car dealerships and public buses and hurling rocks at commuter trains. Fran ce's government faced growing pressure to curb the violence, fueled by a nger over poor conditions in suburban Paris housing projects. Rampaging for an eighth day, youths ignored an appeal for calm from Frenc h President Jacques Chirac, whose government worked feverishly to fend o ff a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in sub urbs heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin called a string of emergency meeting s with Cabinet ministers throughout the day. He told the Senate the gove rnment "will not give in" to violence in the troubled suburbs. "Order and justice will be the final word in our country," Villepin said. "The return to calm and the restoration of public order are the priorit y _ our absolute priority." The riots started last Thursday after the electrocution deaths of two tee nagers hiding in a power station from police they believed were chasing them in the northeastern suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. By Wednesday night, violence had spread to at least 20 Paris-region towns , said Jean-Francois Cordet, the top government official for the Seine-S aint-Denis region north of Paris where the violence has been concentrate d He said youths in the region fired four shots at riot police and fire fighters but caused no injuries. Nine people were injured in Seine-Saint-Denis and 315 cars burned across the Paris area, officials said. In the tough northeastern suburb of Auln ay-sous-Bois, youth gangs set fire to a Renault car dealership and burne d at least a dozen cars, a supermarket and a local gymnasium. Traffic was halted Thursday morning on a suburban commuter line linking P aris to Charles de Gaulle airport after stone-throwing rioters attacked two trains overnight at the Le Blanc-Mesnil station. They forced a condu ctor from one train and broke windows, the SNCF rail authority said. The unrest has highlighted the division between France's big cities and t heir poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty. The violence also cast doubt on the success of France's model of seeking to integrate its large immigrant community _ its Muslim population, at a n estimated 5 million, is Western Europe's largest _ by playing down dif ferences between ethnic groups. Rather than feeling embraced as full and equal citizens, immigrants and their French-born children complain of p olice harassment and of being refused jobs, housing and opportunities. Opposition groups accused the government of letting the situation spiral out of control, either by failing to act quickly enough or letting in to o many immigrants over the years. "We see that the situation in certain neighborhoods is not getting better at all but degenerating," Socialist Party President Jean-Marc Ayrault t old LCI television, who said Chirac's conservatives "did not know how to take control." Right-wing French lawmaker Philippe de Villiers, who has said he wants to "stop the Islamization of France," told RTL radio that the problem stem med from the "failure of a policy of massive and uncontrolled immigratio n" Minister of Social Cohesion Jean-Louis Borloo said the government had to react "firmly" but added that France must also acknowledge its failure t o have dealt with anger simmering in poor suburbs for decades. "We cannot hide the truth: that for 30 years we have not done enough," he told France-2 television.
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