13 Arrested In Paris Suburb Riots

Violence Fueled By Police Crackdown, Gov't Official's Comments

(AP)  Youths torched cars, set garbage bins alight and threw stones at police in a fifth night of rioting in a Paris suburb, and set two primary school classrooms on fire as rioting spread to two other suburban towns, police and an official said Tuesday.

Police said that 19 people were detained in the late Monday and early Tuesday rioting in Clichy-sous-Bois and three other suburbs and 13 of them jailed. A total of 21 cars — two of them police cars — were burned, police said.

The mayor of Sevran said youths set two rooms of a primary school on fire, along with several cars. Police said three officers were slightly injured in Sevran.

"These acts have a direct link to the events in Clichy-sous-Bois," Sevran Mayor Stephane Gatignon said in a statement.

The troubles started Thursday night in Clichy-sous-Bois, northeast of Paris, following the accidental electrocution deaths of two teenagers who hid in a power substation to escape police whom they thought were chasing them. Officials have said police were not pursuing the boys, aged 15 and 17, at all.

Suburbs that ring France's big cities suffer soaring unemployment and are home to immigrant communities, often from Muslim North Africa. Disenchantment, and anger, run high.

Besides Clichy-sous-Bois and Sevran, troubles also erupted in Aulnay-sous-bois and Bondy, police said. All communities are in the Seine-Saint-Denis region, considered a "sensitive" area of immigration and modest incomes.

Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday ordered a permanent increase in police and undercover agents to identify troublemakers in difficult neighborhoods. However, the law-and-order minister's tough talk drew growing criticism Tuesday — even from within his own government.