Riot Police Restore Calm To Paris Suburbs
Vast deployments of riot police restored calm to the troubled suburbs of northern Paris, with only scattered cases of arson reported Thursday after nights of rioting.
A few cars and garbage cans were set on fire overnight in the Val d'Oise region north of Paris, but police made only a handful of arrests and there were no attacks on officers, a spokeswoman for the local government said.
"It really is getting calmer and calmer," she said, refusing to be identified by name, in line with department policy. "We are returning little by little to normal."
The riots first broke out following the deaths Sunday of two teenage boys in a motorbike crash with a police car in Villiers-le-Bel. Some residents refused to believe the deaths were accidental, blaming the police.
On Thursday, some 300 mourners marched through Villiers-le-Bel carrying a banner at the front of the funeral procession that demanded "justice and truth" for the dead teens, Mohsin Sehhouli, 16, and Lakamy Samoura, 15.
Samoura will be buried in Senegal, the country his parents immigrated from in 1966, said Jean Chevais, an attorney for the family.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's public support has slipped below 50 percent, according to a poll released Thursday, after protracted transport strikes and amid growing pessimism about France's future.
Forty-nine percent of respondents in a poll by TNS-Sofres said they trusted the president to resolve the country's problems, while 49 percent said they did not. A month ago, 53 percent of respondents said they trusted his abilities.
Sarkozy's approval ratings remained high for months after his election in May, but have steadily declined this fall as he has launched several difficult reform plans.
At the height of the violence Monday night, rioters fired shotguns at officers, injuring at least 10. The rioting echoed the uprisings that swept France's poor suburbs for three weeks in 2005 - but guns rarely were used in 2005.
The unrest revealed the anger still simmering in the poor housing projects where many Arabs, blacks and other minorities live, often isolated from mainstream society.
He vowed zero tolerance for the use of firearms against officers.
"If it is a new attitude, it won't last long," he said, adding that police were worthy of praise because they legitimately could have fired back.
Successive governments have struggled with the question of how to integrate minority youths from poor neighborhoods. Heavy state investment has done little to improve housing and create jobs in the depressed projects that ring Paris.
The government's newest plan - an "equal opportunities" bill to improve the prospects of those in poor suburbs - will be unveiled Jan. 22.