Wednesday November 2, 2005 12:46 AM
By ELAINE GANLEY
The Guardian (UK)
Associated Press Writer
PARIS (AP) - Violence erupted for a sixth night Tuesday in the troubled suburbs northeast of Paris with police firing rubber bullets and tear gas as they faced down gangs of youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois, according to witnesses.
A store set afire in the nearby suburb of Bondy, France-Info radio reported.
No trouble was immediately reported in Clichy-sous-Bois, where rioting began last Thursday following the accidental deaths of two teenagers. The latest violence broke out as Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy met in Paris with youths and officials from Clichy-sous-Bois.
An Associated Press Television news team reported confrontations between about 20 police and 40 youths in Aulnay-sous-Bois with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.
France-Info said that about 100 fires burning in numerous suburbs of the Seine-Saint-Denis region, an area of soaring unemployment, delinquency and other urban ills.
A carpet store in the town of Bondy was set afire, and cars were burning in Bondy and Sevran, France-Info reported.
Tension had mounted throughout the day after angry young men torched cars, garbage bins and even a primary school in several days of rioting that highlighted the division between France's big cities and their poor satellites where disenchantment thrives.
Police said 13 people were jailed following rioting late Monday and early Tuesday in Clichy-sous-Bois and three other suburbs. A total of 68 cars were torched in a handful of suburbs, LCI television reported, while police said 21 cars - two of them police vehicles - were set on fire in Clichy-sous-Bois on Monday night.
The mayor of Sevran said youths set two rooms of a primary school on fire Monday night along with several cars. Police said three officers there were slightly injured.
``These acts have a direct link to the events in Clichy-sous-Bois,'' Sevran Mayor Stephane Gatignon said in a statement.
Suburbs that ring France's big cities, home to immigrant communities often from Muslim North Africa, suffer soaring unemployment and discrimination. Disenchantment and anger thrive in the tall cinderblock towers and long ``bars'' that make up the projects.
The troubles were triggered by the deaths of two teenagers electrocuted in a power substation where they hid to escape police whom they thought were chasing them. A third was injured but survived. Officials have said police were not pursuing the boys, aged 15 and 17.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin met Tuesday with the parents of the three families who a day earlier had refused an invitation to meet with the interior minister - blamed by many for fanning anger with his tough talk and tactics.
Sarkozy met Tuesday night with some of the victims' relatives, other youths, a police representative and officials from Clichy-sous-Bois, according to the Interior Ministry said, which gave no details of what was said at the meeting.
In Clichy-sous-Bois, the head of the Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, visiting Muslim leaders there, was forced to leave abruptly after his car was pelted with stones, LCI reported. A tear gas grenade that landed in the mosque Sunday fed anger. It was unclear who fired the tear gas.
A growing number of politicians and anti-racism groups claimed Sarkozy was inflaming the tense atmosphere.
Sarkozy recently referred to the troublemakers as ``scum'' or ``riffraff,'' and in the past vowed to ``clean out'' the suburbs.
Even within the conservative government, there were critics.
Such ``warlike'' words will not bring calm, Equal Opportunities Minister Azouz Begag said in an interview published in the daily Liberation. He told the paper that he ``contests this method of becoming submerged by imprecise, warlike semantics.''
While re-establishing order demands firmness, ``it is in fighting the discrimination that victimizes youths that order is re-established, the order of equality,'' said Begag, raised in a low-income suburb of Lyon.
The president of SOS-Racism, an anti-racism group, called Tuesday for a ``massive investment plan'' to cure suburban ills.
``The police response alone ... is not at all adequate,'' Dominique Sopo said on France-Info radio, calling for a ``real policy of breaking the ghettos.''
Violence first visited French suburbs in 1981, in the Lyon area. For three decades, successive governments have worked to improve conditions, but discrimination and a sense of exclusion prevails.
So it sounds like Le Petit Caporal is on the scene.