French violence smoulders, meetings ban in Lyon
13/11/2005 22h34
French policemen are on patrol in Lyon
©AFP - Jean-Philippe KsiazekPARIS (AFP) - Violence continued to smoulder in France's poor suburbs despite curfews in some 30 localities, and authorities in the southeastern city of Lyon banned public gatherings in order to head off a repeat of clashes in the historic centre.
But nationwide police officials said the number of attacks was falling and expressed hope of a gradual return to normality.
The European Union pledged to release 50 million euros (58 million dollars) for urban programmes to improve conditions in France's riot-hit areas, the EU executive president Jose Manuel Barroso said before a meeting set with French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin late Sunday.
In the first disturbances in the heart of a French city since the start of the troubles on October 27, police used tear-gas late Saturday afternoon to disperse a crowd of stone-throwing youths on the 17th century Place Bellecour in Lyon. Eleven people were arrested.
Gendarmes patrol in La Reynerie district in Toulouse
©AFP - Georges GobetOn Sunday authorities in the city -- France's third largest -- issued an order banning public meetings "likely to provoke or incite disorder on the streets or in public places." The order applied to the city centre and lasted through the afternoon.
After dark car-burnings resumed, with police reporting 15 cars set alight on Sunday evening by 10:30 pm (2130 GMT).
Overnight a total of 374 cars were burned across the country, a fall of 128 on the night before and well below the highpoint last Sunday when some 1,300 vehicles were destroyed.
Police said 212 people were arrested, bringing the total of those detained since the start of the troubles to more than 2,650.
Gendarmes talk with youths at Venissieux
©AFP - Jean-Philippe KsiazekAmong the more serious incidents, a policeman was hospitalised when a metal ball was thrown at his head in the northern Paris suburb of La Courneuve, and a nursery school in the southern town of Aix-en-Provence was damaged in an arson attack.
A Molotov cocktail was also thrown at the main mosque in the southeastern city of Lyon without causing damage.
But national police chief Michel Gaudin said that in the vast majority of places where violence broke out overnight, the damage caused was only one or two cars burned.
"There is a major easing-off. Things should begin to get rapidly back to normal," Gaudin said.
A youth of the Minguettes District of Lyon lights a flare
©AFP - Jean-Philippe KsiazekAccording to figures compiled before the riots by the police intelligence service RG, some 28,000 cars were burned in the first ten months of the year -- making an average of 650 a week, most of which were destroyed at weekends.
The centre of Paris remained calm after the authorities banned public meetings there on Saturday, fearing an influx of youth gangs from the suburbs. In the end there was no sign of trouble, and the capital's outskirts were also relatively quiet.
A government official also spoke of cautious optimism.
"We were expecting a hot night, but it was not as busy as he feared. We feared problems in Paris but there were none. The slowdown is now established, and things should be easier to control," the senior official said.
The assembly bans in Paris and Lyon were imposed under emergency legislation activated by the government of President Jacques Chirac last Tuesday in response to the worst outbreak of urban violence in France since the student uprising of May 1968.
The same emergency law was used to impose curfews in about 30 towns and cities in seven departments Saturday night, including Lyon, Nice on the riviera and Rouen in Normandy. Under the orders all unaccompanied children under 16 are banned from leaving their homes after 10.00 p.m.
The cabinet was to meet Monday to decide whether to pass a law to extend the state of emergency beyond the initial 12 days.
Firemen work on a burned car in the suburbs of Strasbourg
©AFP - Olivier MorinThe violence in France's delapidated out-of-town tenement estates was sparked by the accidental deaths of two teenagers who hid in an electricity sub-station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois after an encounter with police.
More than 8,000 cars have been burned and numerous businesses and public buildings gutted by gangs of youths who are mainly from the country's Arab and black minorities.
France's tough-talking Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who has become the number one hate figure among the rioters, said procedures were under way to expel foreigners convicted of taking part in the violence.
"There should be the first expulsions at the start of the week," he said. Some 120 of those arrested have foreign nationality, but officials said in practice only a handful of these are liable to be deported.
Far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen in an interview on the private radio station RTL1 on Sunday blamed the rioting on "uncontrolled immigration from the Third World" and, while endorsing the use of curfews, he described the government response as insufficient.
Le Pen, 77, was to speak at a rally of France's National Front party in central Paris Monday evening.
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