csua.org/u/dyh -> news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051107/ap_on_re_eu/france_rioting_118;_ylt=AtfYghEHrTHboiD2_uDk.5fgelIB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
AP Rioting Spreads to 300 Towns in France By ANGELA DOLAND, Associated Press Writer Mon Nov 7,11:54 AM ET PARIS - Rioting by French youths spread to 300 towns overnight, and a 61- year-old man hurt in the violence died of his wounds, the first fatality in 11 days of unrest that has shocked the country, police said Monday.
As urban unrest spread to neighboring Belgium and possibly Germany, the F rench government faced growing criticism for its inability to stop the v iolence, despite massive police deployment and continued calls for calm. Meanwhile, governments worldwide urged their citizens to be careful in Fr ance. On Sunday night, vandals burned more than 1,400 vehicles, and clashes aro und the country left 36 police injured, setting a new high for overnight arson and violence since rioting started last month, national police ch ief Michel Gaudin told a news conference. Australia, Britain, Germany and Japan advised their citizens to exercise care in France, joining the United States, Russia and at least a half do zen other countries in warning tourists to stay away from violence-hit a reas. The victim was identified as Jean-Jacques Le Chenadec, a retired auto ind ustry worker who died after being beaten by an attacker. He was trying t o extinguish a trash can fire Friday at his housing project in the north eastern suburb of Stains when an attacker caught him by surprise and bea t him into a coma, police said. Apparent copycat attacks spread outside France for the first time, with f ive cars torched outside Brussels' main train station, police in the Bel gian capital said. The mayhem started as an outburst of anger in suburban Paris housing proj ects and has fanned out nationwide among disaffected youths, mostly of M uslim or African origin, to become France's worst civil unrest in more t han a decade. Attacks overnight Sunday to Monday were reported in 274 towns, and police made 395 arrests, Gaudin said. "This spread, with a sort of shock wave spreading across the country, sho ws up in the number of towns affected," Gaudin said, noting that the vio lence appeared to be sliding away from its flash point in the Parisian s uburbs and worsening elsewhere. It was the first time police had been injured by weapons' fire and there were signs that rioters were deliberately seeking out clashes with polic e, officials said. Among the injured police, 10 were hurt by youths firing fine-grain birdsh ot in a late-night clash in the southern Paris suburb of Grigny, nationa l police spokesman Patrick Hamon said. Two were hospitalized, but the in juries were not considered life-threatening. The youths were accidentally electrocuted as they hid from police in a power substation. About 4,700 cars have been burned in France since the rioting began and 1 ,200 suspects were detained at least temporarily, Gaudin said. The growing violence is forcing France to confront long-simmering anger i n its suburbs, where many Africans and their French-born children live o n society's margins, struggling with high unemployment, racial discrimin ation and despair fertile terrain for crime of all sorts as well as fo r Muslim extremists offering frustrated youths a way out. France, with 5 million Muslims, has the largest Islamic population in Wes tern Europe.
President Jacques Chirac , whose government is under intense pressure to halt the violence, promis ed stern punishment for those behind the attacks, making his first publi c comments Sunday since the riots started. "The law must have the last word," Chirac said after a security meeting w ith top ministers. France is determined "to be stronger than those who w ant to sow violence or fear, and they will be arrested, judged and punis hed." France's biggest Muslim fundamentalist organization, the Union for Islami c Organizations of France, issued a fatwa, or religious decree, that for bade all those "who seek divine grace from taking part in any action tha t blindly strikes private or public property or can harm others." Arsonists burned two schools and a bus in the central city of Saint-Etien ne and its suburbs, and two people were injured in the bus attack. Churc hes were set ablaze in northern Lens and southern Sete, he said. In Colombes in suburban Paris, youths pelted a bus with rocks, sending a 13-month-old child to the hospital with a head injury, Hamon said, while a daycare center was burned in Saint-Maurice, another Paris suburb. Much of the youths' anger has focused on law-and-order Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, whose reference to the troublemakers as "scum" appeared to inflame passions.
The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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