"Youths" torch buses around Paris
The intifada continues in France. And this latest round of bus attacks shows that it is spreading to previously unexpected places. "Youths torch buses around Paris," by Cecile Brisson for AP:
PARIS - Youths forced passengers off three buses and set them on fire overnight in suburban Paris, raising tensions Thursday ahead of the first anniversary of the riots that engulfed France's rundown, heavily immigrant neighborhoods.
No injuries were reported, but worried bus drivers refused to enter some suburbs after dark, and the prime minister urged a swift, stern response.
The riots in October 2005 raged through housing projects in suburbs nationwide, springing in part from anger over entrenched discrimination against immigrants and their French-born children, many of them Muslims from former French colonies in Africa. Despite an influx of funds and promises, disenchantment still thrives in those communities.
About 10 attackers -- five of them with handguns -- stormed a bus in Montreuil east of Paris early Thursday and forced the passengers off, the RATP transport authority said. They then drove off and set the bus on fire.
Late Wednesday, three attackers forced passengers off another bus in Athis-Mons, south of Paris, and tossed a Molotov cocktail inside, police officials said. The driver managed to put out the fire. Elsewhere, between six and 10 youths herded passengers off a bus in the western suburb of Nanterre late Wednesday and set it alight.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said the events "should lead to an immediate response."
"We cannot accept the unacceptable," he told reporters in the northern suburb of Cergy-Pontoise. "There will be arrests. ... That is our responsibility."
Villepin also said efforts should be directed to "revitalize" troubled neighborhoods, and repeated the government's insistence that authorities rid France of "lawless zones" where youth gangs operate.
The overnight attacks and recent ambushes on police have raised concern about the changing character of suburban violence, which is seemingly more premeditated than last year's spontaneous outcry and no longer restricted to the housing projects. The use of handguns was unusual -- last year's rioters were armed primarily with crowbars, stones, sticks or gasoline bombs.
Regional authorities said the Nanterre bus line, which passes near Paris' financial district, had not been considered at a high risk of attack. Francois Saglier, director of bus service at the RATP, said the attacks happened "without prior warning and not necessarily in neighborhoods considered difficult."
[...]
The transit authority in the Essonne region south of Paris on Wednesday suspended nighttime bus service for security reasons following "multiple incidents," including a tear gas bomb.
France's inability to better integrate minorities and recent violence against police are becoming major political issues as the campaign heats up for next year's presidential and parliamentary elections.
Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, who is considering whether to run for president, said that attacks demonstrate "a desire to kill."
"Some individuals are looking for provocations, and sometimes go further," she said on i-Tele television. She acknowledged people facing unemployment and living in overcrowded housing projects "have trouble finding their place" in society.
French police face 'permanent intifada'
More on the jihad in France from Jamey Keaten for Associated Press (thanks to Drew):
EPINAY-SUR-SEINE, France - On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized, and no arrests made.
The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.
One small police union claims officers are facing a "permanent intifada." Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.
National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted — and some now receive police escorts in such areas.
On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television....
Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.
Taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge? When did it not have this? They were shouting "Allahu akbar" last year.
"Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of 'Allah Akbar' (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned," he said in an interview.
Larger, more mainstream police unions sharply disagree that the suburban unrest has any religious basis. However, they do say that some youth gangs no longer seem content to throw stones or torch cars and instead appear determined to hurt police officers — or worse.
"First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they're leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us," said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. "These are acts of war."
Sadio Sylla, an unemployed mother of three, watched the Oct. 13 ambush of the police patrol in Epinay-sur-Seine from her second-floor window. She, other witnesses and police union officials said up to 50 masked youths surged out from behind trees.
One of the three officers needed 30 stitches to his face after being struck by a rock.
The attack was one of at least four gang beatings of police in Parisian suburbs since Sept. 19. Early Friday, a dozen hooded people hurled stones, iron bars and bottles filled with gasoline at two police vehicles in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a flashpoint of last year's riots, said Guillaume Godet, a city hall spokesman. One officer required three stitches to his head.
Minority youths have long complained that police are more heavy-handed in their dealings with them than with whites, demanding their papers and frisking them for no apparent reason.
Such perceived ill-treatment fuels feelings of injustice, as do the difficulties that many youths from immigrant families have finding work.
Distrust and tension thrive. Rumors have flown around some housing projects that police are hoping to use the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this week, to round up known troublemakers, on the basis that fasting all day will have made the youths weaker and easier to catch.
Police say that suggestion is ludicrous. However, they are on guard ahead of the first anniversary this week of last year's riots. That violence began after two youths who thought police were chasing them hid in a power substation and were electrocuted to death.
Police unions suspect that the recent attacks may be an attempt to spark new riots.
"We are getting the impression these youths want a 'remake' of what happened last year," said Fred Lagache, national secretary of the Alliance police union. "The youths are trying to cause a police error to justify chaos."
Of course they are.
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