World

100 Injured In Paris Rioting

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 16, 1998 / 12:57 PM EDT / CBS

More than 100 people were injured when roving bands of masked youths went on a rampage in Paris on Thursday during student protests against chronic shortages of teachers and classroom space, hospital officials said on Friday.

Police said 150 were arrested during the spree of violence, blamed by the government and protest leaders on youths from troubled suburban areas who used mobile phones to coordinate their two-hour rampage.

The demonstration in the French capital was one of hundreds across the country which drew an estimated 400,000 to 450,000 people, police said.

Sporadic protests continued on Friday and student leaders have called for a new national day of action on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the protesters demands have been addressed by the French government.

Education Minister Claude Allegre says more teachers are going to be hired, and schools are going to be modernized. He says the moves were agreed upon during a meeting yesterday with student representatives.

Two teachers unions, one for high school instructors and the other physical education teachers, called on their members to protest along with the students on Tuesday.

Of those detained, 122 remained in custody on Friday morning, including four women and 75 people under 18 years of age. Under French law they can be held for up to 48 hours before being taken before an investigating magistrate.

The violence broke out at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris as an estimated 28,000 high school students gathered for a protest march on the Education Ministry in western Paris.

Both the size of the protests and the violence were an embarrassment for the leftist government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, which generally supports the students' demands but says reforms must come more slowly due to the state's limited resources.

Student protests have a tradition in France of spiralling out of control and shaking governments, but members of Jospin's cabinet insisted on Friday that things were under control.

"We (students and the government) want the same things," Allegre told Europe 1 radio.

Allegre said he was shocked and saddened by Thursday's violence and said wrongdoers should be punished but insisted that those smashing windows, overturning cars and looting shops had not been students.