French Police On High Alert
Some 3,000 police fanned out around Paris on Saturday to prevent any attempts to attack high-profile targets such as the Eiffel Tower after a 16th straight night of unrest and arson.
Police were posted in suburban trains and at strategic points around the capital, where public gatherings considered risky were banned until Sunday morning. The ban followed calls for "violent actions" posted on numerous Internet blogs and in text messages on cell phones.
"This is not a rumor," said National Police Chief Michel Gaudin. The famed Eiffel Tower and Champs-Elysees avenue were among potential targets, he said. "I think one can easily imagine the places where we must be highly vigilant," he told reporters Saturday.
Paris police banned gatherings of "a nature that could provoke or encourage disorder" from 10 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday.
On Friday evening, two Molotov cocktails were tossed into a mosque in the southern city of Carpentras, slightly damaging the porch, local officials said. It was not immediately clear whether the attack was linked to the unrest that has wracked the poor suburbs and towns of France since Oct. 27.
President Jacques Chirac asked investigators to find those behind the incident in Carpentras, a town grimly remembered for a 1990 neo-Nazi attack on a Jewish cemetery that sparked national outrage.
Some two weeks ago, in Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois where the recent violence started, fumes from a police tear gas grenade spread into a mosque and heightened the anger that has fueled the worst suburban unrest in the country's history.
The riots have forced France to confront the touchy issue of the poor suburbs ringing big cities populated by immigrants and their French children. They face soaring unemployment, poverty and routine discrimination.
Authorities have acknowledged the roots of the problem are deep-seated, perhaps linked to the French approach to immigration, which works to fit immigrants, whatever their origins, into a single mold.
The violence was triggered by the accidental electrocution deaths of two Muslim teenagers in Clichy-sous-Bois on Oct. 27 and has spread around France.
The riots have been marked by hundreds of nightly arson attacks on vehicles. Schools, gymnasiums, warehouses and public transport also have been favorite targets for arsons. A furniture store and a carpet store were burned overnight in Rambouillet, southwest of Paris, police said.
The number of vehicles burned overnight across the country climbed slightly to 502 from 463 the previous night, police said Saturday. The recent figures are down sharply from the peak of the violence.
"We returned to an almost normal situation in Ile de France," said Gaudin, referring to the Paris region. He said that 86 vehicles were burned, which he said was about normal.
As unrest abated, calls for peace were mounting. Peace marches were planned Saturday in Lyon and Toulouse.
France imposed a state of emergency Wednesday in a bid to curb the spiraling violence.
Overnight, two police officers were injured, one burned in the face by a firebomb while trying to put out flames of a burning vehicle in the Aisne region, Gaudin said.
Arson attacks were counted in 163 towns around France, he said. Another 206 people were detained overnight, bringing to 2,440 the number of suspects picked up for questioning in just over two weeks of unrest.
Authorities have imposed curfews on minors in seven towns, one of the state-of-emergency measures that also empowers police to conduct day and night house searches and take other steps to quell violence.