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St-Denis, Paris - They move in packs - always at night - like hyenas, bringing entire communities of tower blocks in the city's suburbs to their knees. These young men are often school dropouts or unemployed, and often from fatherless homes. Their reign of terror is dominated by violence, theft and drug selling. Women complain that they are harassed and sometimes threatened for not complying with their whims. Some law enforcement officials say the violence that has engulfed France's tough suburbs - and yesterday spread to Paris proper - was instigated by criminal gangs hoping to turn their neighbourhoods into...

Dozens of youths and police have clashed in northern France, leaving nine people injured. Around 60 cars went up in flames as youths went on a rampage in the streets of Vitry-le-Francois, some 200 kilometres north of the capital Paris. The youths, armed with baseball bats and Molotov cocktails, were only scattered after dozens of security forces quelled the unrest. The scuffles broke out after a young man was murdered on Saturday evening.

LA COURNEUEVE, France, May 6, 2007 (AFP) - As news of rightwinger Nocolas Sarkozy's presidential victory flashed up on the television in the cafe, Gnyma Cisse buried her head in her hands in a mixture of frustration and fury. "I'm disgusted," said Cisse, 23, who had gathered to watch the election coverage in Le Metro cafe which caters to a largely immigrant and first generation French-born clientelle in the La Courneuve suburb of Paris. Cisse, of Sengalese origin, called her sister-in-law who lives here without French nationality. "Pack your bags. The planes are already on standby," she said, alluding to...

22-year-old French woman says youths of Middle Eastern origin snatched her Star of David necklace, lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach Yael Branovsky Published: 04.26.07, 23:41 / Israel Jewish Scene A 22-year-old French woman said Thursday she was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by two youths at an underground train station in Marseille. The youths, who the woman said were of Middle Eastern origin, snatched her Star of David necklace, then lifted her shirt and drew a swastika on her stomach before fleeing the scene. According to the Jewish Agency, the French police have refrained...

French police urged journalists on Friday to be vigilant in some riot-hit suburbs of Paris after several TV crews were attacked and robbed by youths just days before France's presidential election. In Clichy-Sous-Bois, where week-long riots started in 2005, three TV crews were attacked this week, with the assailants stealing cameras and other filming equipment, police said.

Youths throwing stones and eggs came to blows with police and fire officers in Malmö's Rosengård housing estate on Saturday night. At two points in the evening the demonstrators were judged so threatening that fire officers refused to enter the area without a police escort. The troubles started at about 7:30pm when police received a call from a member of the public alleging that they had been threatened. A police patrol went to Ramels Väg in Rosengård to respond to the report, and while officers investigated youths gathered and started throwing stones. By 8:30pm around 15 young people were throwing...

PARIS -France’s top presidential candidates seized on a new campaign issue on Wednesday after the police fought gangs of youths for seven hours at a railroad station here. Stores were destroyed, the pall of tear gas filled the station, Gare du Nord, and 13 people were arrested. The episode, described as “urban guerrilla warfare” by the new interior minister, François Baroin, was a reminder of the tensions still simmering 18 months after rioting swept immigrant neighborhoods across France. It foreshadowed the task ahead for the candidate who is elected president in May. The police said the trouble began Tuesday afternoon...

French police are bracing themselves for fresh outbreaks of violence after hundreds of youths rioted over the arrest of an illegal immigrant at a main railway station in Paris. The rioters fought running battles with police in and around Gare Du Nord for five hours, set light to rubbish bins and smashed nearby shop windows. Witnesses described groups of holiday-makers cowering in fear on the platforms after stepping off trains from London, Brussels and Amsterdam.

It’s Jihad, Not Joblessness Causing Rioting by Robert Spencer HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE Why have the French riots happened? From many accounts one would think that the riots have been caused by France’s failure to implement Marxism. “The unrest,” AP explained, has highlighted the division between France’s big cities and their poor suburbs, with frustration simmering in the housing projects in areas marked by high unemployment, crime and poverty.” Others have blamed France’s failure to integrate Muslims into French society. However, this has been a policy on which both Muslims and non-Muslims in France have agreed. In her seminal Eurabia: The...

Every night, Magid and fellow members of the Tabligh sect of Islam fan out across the grim projects of this poor, immigrant suburb of Paris and try to talk some sense into the angry young men who have been setting it ablaze. "We tell them: 'if you're violent, you're no longer a Muslim. Islam is moving away from you,' " says Magid. "When they hear that, they usually feel alone and they calm down." As France enters its 12th night of rioting, Islamic organizations like the Tabligh, which originated in the 1920s in India, stand to benefit from the unrest...

PARIS -- As the Eurabian Nights' dream starts exploding in the face of France, mainstream media are counting the number of torched cars and explaining that the rioters suffer from poverty and discrimination. It would seem that Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy ignited this unprecedented wave of violence by calling the rioters "la racaille" and promising to clean up the lost territories of the Republic. "Racaille" (pronounced rack-eye'-eh) is almost too good to translate. It means everything from bully to two-bit Mafioso, with connotations of thuggery, thievery, racketeering, and sleaze. La racaille is a gangsta class of knife-wielding bad guys who...

PARIS -- Police officers, exhausted and dispirited after 11 nights of street battles, say their mainly young African and Arab adversaries have access to sophisticated weapons including grenades and could soon begin using them. A dozen officers were injured, two of them seriously, after being shot with hunting rifles fitted with lead pellets during rioting last night in the suburb of Grigny, south of Paris, police said. Jean-Christophe Carne, president of a police trade union, told The Washington Times before last night's outbreak that police officers were increasingly pessimistic that civic order would be restored anytime soon. "Most of these...

Paris inferno is ominous - Piers Akerman November 6, 2005 Paris is burning - burning furiously with a blind rage that Australian authorities must heed if suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne are not to suffer the same fate. For more than a week, Muslim youths in more than 20 Paris-region towns have created a wave of violence in which more than 300 cars have been have burnt and hundreds of millions of francs worth of property destroyed. The suburbs, many of them among France's poorest, have been declared off-limits to police by militant Muslims, who have turned them into religious...

Violence and arson spilled from the suburbs of Paris to at least 15 cities across France Saturday, as police and government officials struggled unsuccessfully for the 10th day to stem the expanding unrest. Police said groups of young men torched nearly 900 vehicles and at least a dozen schools, police stations and youth centers around the country. Though the unrest remained concentrated in the poor suburbs ringing Paris, violence erupted in Strasbourg near the German border, Bordeaux in the southwest, Rouen in Normandy and Orleans in the Loire Valley. Tactics were similar in all areas: mobile bands of youths setting...

France hit by a burning rage Matthew Campbell, Aulnay-sous-Bois A FEW days ago Georges Bigot, a French firefighter, was standing with colleagues on a street in a suburb of Paris waiting for reinforcements to help put out a fire started by rioters. Suddenly a television fell out of the sky in front of him. It had been heaved over a balcony eight floors up and shattered on the ground. “Have you ever seen a television exploding on the pavement?” asked Bigot wearily as he stood under a light drizzle. “Well, it gave me quite a shock.” As he spoke, thick...

Paris - \'We burned 15 cars. How many do you have?\' A grim contest is under way in France as kids from disadvantaged suburbs vie with each other to see who can riot the hardest. On Internet websites, young arsonists brag about their successes. Rioting, it seems, has become a trend sport, as youths in immigrant areas of provincial cities begin to rally to the call from Paris. While political slogans hold no sway among these youngsters, hatred for Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is palpable. \'Now we\'re the ones chasing you with the Karcher (high-pressure hoses),\' they say, referring to...

Eleven cars were torched inside the city of Paris early Saturday as urban unrest spread from the northeast suburbs, a police official said. The violence reached across France, extending south to resort cities on the Mediterranean. By 1 a.m., at least 546 vehicles were burned, 11 of them inside Paris, said Patrick Hamon, spokesman for the national police. The overall figures were expected to climb by daybreak, he added.